An Evergreen talk I gave to FSOSS at Seneca College in October of 2008.
- 1. Evergreen: an enterprise strength OSS solution for library
ossification, Part 1. John Fink Digital Technologies Development
Librarian McMaster University
2. My relationship with the ILS, 1995-2008: 3. Hey but...
Whatisan ILS? 4.
- It's anIntegrated Library System , software that...
- Tells people what books and magazines a library has (
catalogue)
- Handles checking them out to people ( circulation)
- Usually helps with ordering stuff ( acquisitions)
5. They replaced... 6. In other words... It handles a lot of
what we typically get in our heads when we thinklibrary , even
though the nature of the library especially in academia has changed
dramatically over the last fifteen years or so, with the rise of
databases, websites, reference services over IM and SMS, things
like that. 7. But about fourteen years ago, when everything was
changing, just around the time I installed Slackware and bought a
jar of hot sauce over the Web and thoughtholy crap, this is the
future , libraries pretty muchweretheir physical collections those
books and magazines and had been since, well, the invention of
libraries. 8. And the ILS, then, was amajorthing. 9. It ran
onImportant Machines : 10. 11.
- And it cost alotof money.
12. And we paid.We paid because we couldn't do it ourselves, and
the benefits that the ILS gave us over the card catalogue were
wonderful. 13.
-
- And even though the money is a lot, the issue isn't really
money...
14.
- Libraries and librarians like open and free standards and
working with other libraries and the public.
- That's why we made interchange standards like MARC, Z39.50 and
SRU, and, oh yeah, loan all those books out to people with no
upfront costs.
15.
- But to traditional proprietary companies, interoperability
isundesireable...
- ... because it means you haveoptions ...
- ... which means you might go somewhereelse...
- ... so they (generally) will only support a minimal amount of
interoperability
16. So, we're going somewhere.
- NOSM and Algoma University
17. We're doing this because:
- All of us, in one form or another, have had proprietary
software companies fail us; whether it's because the software or
hardware is being end-of-lifed, and migration costs are exorbitant
.
- And nowadays, we're smart enough to take some measure of
responsibility for the operation and development of our own
software.
18. So we decided, in early 2007, to move off our various
proprietary ILS systems to something called Evergreen.We formed the
Project Conifer to do this. 19. But first, for the uninitiated
- Built on open standards...
- Runs on cheap-ish hardware...
20.
- That sounds terrific.Why isn't every library everywhere doing
this?
- As an industry, we'reconservative. We'reafraid of change.
- Many many different pieces == many many places to break.
- Install process gettingbetter , but...
- New ways of doing things == learning curve...
21.
- Right now, Evergreen is sort of how Linux was back in my hot
sauce ordering days workable , yes.Lots of installs, even.But still
scary.Not trivial to install.Not how we're used to doing
things.
22. Break the shell and you'll find magic. 23. 24. So we've got
ths project, but:
- Provincially comprehensive
- Official at any sort of high level
25. Fortunately, we're not alone
- Examples of Evergreen installs:
- Georgia PINES (~280 libraries)
- Michigan Library Consortium (Welcome GRPL!)
- The Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative
- And eIFL-FOSS in Nepal, Zimbabwe, and Armenia.
26. So it's proven, but...
- At the moment, it lacks what we would consider more academic
features.
- These are due in with version 2.0 later this year.
- And other things, like internationalization, a Z39.50 server, a
better admin interface...
- ...these come in 1.4 (this month!)
27. At the risk of sounding like this guy: 28. Or (maybe) worse
yet: 29.
- We wantfreedom.We'rescared:
- Of being told we can do something but then having it taken from
us
- Of being locked into a platform that is dying a slow death due
to corporate takeovers or an arbitrary technology shift.
30. tl;dr If you can't open it, you don't own it. 31.
-
- So really, it's less a hey this software is free and we don't
have to pay for it woo-hoo kind of thing and more a holy cripes we
need to take a little more interest in what, exactly, this piece of
software long the central kernel of the library is doing.
32. Because it'snotcheap there are hardware and opportunity
costs involved, and just aboutanychange means at least some modicum
of training, and a whole lot of headache. 33. Ten years on? 34. One
year later, they went out of business.