State of the Open ILS Dan Scott OLA

State of the Open ILS Dan Scott OLA Super. Conference Friday, February 1, 2008

Launch On September 5 th, 2006, Evergreen went live in Georgia PINES with: Patron self-service Cataloging Circulation Online catalogue Report 252 libraries, 8 million items, 1 system

Community

Why is Laurentian going green? Our current ILS does not meet our needs: Upgrading to the current supported version broke our bilingual notices Most investments in customizing our ILS would be thrown away if we move to a new discovery layer or system – “API lock-in” We have to migrate to new hardware anyway Our systems librarian is a developer We are not alone. . .

Project Conifer Consortial installation of Evergreen for academics (Laurentian, Mc. Master, and Windsor) – rough plan: Deploy test cluster (5 beefy servers) Install, configure, start loading data Test and improve Usability – collect feedback, improve, and iterate Performance and load Expected benefits include new services, cost sharing, interoperability, and skills development

Let's get the ugly stuff out of the way

Myths and misinformation “Evergreen makes the same mistakes as traditional ILSes; what we need is a loosely coupled system built on a service oriented architecture (SOA)” The heart of Evergreen is the Open Service Request Framework (Open. SRF) – an SOA that uses JSON over XMPP server as the service bus and Perl, C, Java, and Python* as service method implementation languages Evergreen currently looks like a traditional ILS because all of the underlying components are surfaced to the user in a unified interface (staff client or catalog)

Myths and misinformation “Evergreen is great for public library consortiums with hundreds of branches, but doesn't scale down. ” Tell that to Carson Area – Crystal City Schools (who run Evergreen for their high school libraries)! My own experiences: I develop and test Evergreen on my laptop (1. 5 GB RAM) – currently loaded with 50, 000 records I build and distribute Evergreen in VMWare images that run happily in 512 MB of RAM

Myths and misinformation “Evergreen forces a top-down hierarchy on the libraries in a consortial implementation. ” While its administrative model does support a hierarchical structure, you can create a flat hierarchy with an unlimited number of top-level members of that hierarchy Each member can have its own policies, its own catalogue branding regardless of hierarchy

Myths and misinformation “Evergreen is too hard to install. ” How many times have you installed your current ILS? Evergreen does have a lot of system dependencies, but install scripts for Debian, Ubuntu, and Gentoo now do most of the work for you. I'll be giving an Evergreen install and customization session at Code 4 Lib 2008 during a 2. 5 hour time slot

Myths and misinformation “We don't have the skills to support this ourselves. ” Nothing forces you to support Evergreen yourself; if you have an ILS today, you probably don't support that yourself You can buy a support contract for Evergreen - and there actually multiple businesses competing for your Evergreen support dollars!

So what does Evergreen have today? Part 1: Patron interface

Discovery interface

Discovery: spell check

Discovery: results

Discovery: detailed record

Discovery: shelf browser

Socializing: Book bags

Book bags: RSS

Patron self-service

So what does Evergreen have today? Part 2: Staff Client

Circulation

Patron interface

Cataloging features Built-in Z 39. 50 client with support for searching multiple sources MARC editor with contextual help, support for templates, validation Rudimentary authorities support Can load authorities, but can't define them on the fly 'Bucket' support for performing bulk operations on records and items

Z 39. 50 client

MARC editor

Buckets: merging records

Reporting interface

So what's in the works?

What about acquisitions? Started by trying to integrate Apache OFBiz We learned a lot, but OFBiz is HUGE Opted to build what we need for fast iterations Rapid progress in January: Web interface built on Pylons Open. SRF plumbing for budgets, funds, picklists EDI capabilities to be provided by BOTS Target: a complete “buy a book” acquisitions scenario by the end of February

Tell me about serials Financial parts of serials are being built along with acquisitions Plan for serials patterns - overlay one or more basic calendar schedules, with exceptions Example: 13 issues a year = 1 monthly + 1 annual Example: 364 issues a year = 1 daily – 1 annual exception Want to support easy check-ins, even though print subscriptions are declining – inspired by Kardex?

Academic reserves? No academic reserves functionality yet Basic design for academic reserves: Reserve item will be added to a class “bucket” A class bucket will map to one or more instructors, a class name, and a class code A class bucket will override its reserve items' location and circulation policy Eventually we would like to integrate with course management software

Documentation Wiki Mailing lists The Book of Evergreen

Are we there yet? We're working on all of this; it's being built one line of code at a time Advocacy work and day-to-day business operations has slowed down the pace of development for core team My time is split between project management and development – oh yeah, and my ongoing hardware & software & collection development responsibilities More dedicated skilled resources could propel this project ahead (welcome back, David Fiander!)

But we're a geek-free zone! If you don't have the skills in-house to set up and configure Evergreen, commercial support is an option for: Installing and configuring Migration Training Support Custom development Complete hosted system

How do I get started? Get on the mailing lists and the IRC channel Play with the demo site (http: //demo. gapines. org) Please send us your acquisitions workflows (who does what and why) - requesting, selecting, approving, ordering, receiving, rolling over, and anything else. . . Both the OPAC and the Staff Client Try out one of our VMWare images (you can run Linux on Windows!) Read up on the wiki

Questions? When we're out of time, let's go for coffee.

References Evergreen project: http: //open-ils. org/ Project Conifer: http: //conifer. mcmaster. ca/ My blog: http: //coffeecode. net The Evergreen logo is a trademark of Georgia Public Library Service.

License This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2. 5 Canada License. To view a copy of this license, visit http: //creativecommons. org/licenses/by/2. 5/ca/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.