Evergreen Enhancements - Developers Selected

Bibliomation has reviewed the quote submissions from the Evergreen developers and based on our priorities and the available funds for this fiscal year, we will be working with four different developers on thirteen of our original twenty-eight enhancement requests.

The four Evergreen developers are Thomas Berezansky, Equinox, Catalyst IT Services, and EDOCEO.

To see the full list of enhancements that we will be moving forward with, go to http://biblio.org/2012/10/10/evergreen-enhancements/

If you have any questions about any of our enhancements, you can contact Amy Terlaga at terlaga AT biblio DOT org.

Evergreen Enhancements - Our Wish List Items

Earlier this year, we surveyed our member libraries, asking them to submit their most desired wish list items for Evergreen development.  We collected these items and added them to IdeaTorrent, an open source idea submission and voting software solution.  Then we gave our libraries the month of May to vote for their favorite enhancement ideas.  Bibliomation's ILS Steering Committee then reviewed the top vote-getters and worked with Bibliomation headquarters staff to determine which suggestions could be done in house, which were already planned in an upcoming Evergreen release, which were not viable at all, and which ones would make the list of those requests submitted to developers for quote.

We've included a total of thirty enhancement requests, covering the following categories:  Acquisitions, Cataloging, Checkout/Checkin, Holds, Miscellaneous, Notices, Patrons, and Searching.  This Evergreen Enhancement Request for Development quote is being sent out to select developers with the deadline of Friday, September 14th.  Our enhancement development funds are not unlimited so we'll have to decide from that list which ones we can afford to include in this wave of development.

If you're curious to see our enhancement request list for development, you can view it here.

If you have questions about this post, you can email Amy Terlaga at terlaga@biblio.org.

One Year of Evergreen

Happy Evergreen Anniversary to us!

Bibliomation came up on Evergreen 2.0 on June 3, 2011. Since then, we've upgraded to 2.2 and TPAC, with countless small fixes (including some backported 2.1 features) along the way.

Since we've been live, we've circulated 5.7 million items, and we've added 891,000 items and 61,274 patrons. A healthy year, to be sure.

Our little Evergreen sapling has matured and will keep getting stronger. Each patch, tweak, and upgrade has improved Evergreen and made life under this growing tree just that much better.






Image courtesy of CC license by Flickr user Theresa Thompson

A tale of two libraries

Yee-haw! We're officially welcoming two libraries to the Bibliomation fold this month. Warren Public Library went live on November 7 and Bridgeport Public Library returned to Bibliomation on the 14th.

These two libraries couldn't be more different, and it was great fun to spend their go live days with them. Warren is a small town in Northwestern Connecticut and Bridgeport is Connecticut's largest city. This was the first ILS for Warren, where almost every patron knew it was the library's big day.

Bridgeport is returning to Bibliomation -the library was one of the founding members of our consortium and actually housed Biblio's headquarters in our early days. Like the majority of our libraries, they migrated from Horizon. Equinox handled their data migration and we're pleased as punch with the results.

This Thanksgiving, we're giving thanks that we have two fine libraries joining our ranks. Have a joyous and safe holiday, US Evergreeners.

Almost there!

We're coming into the home stretch of our migration-filled two years. The Warren Public Library is automating for the first time and plans to go live on November 7th. Bridgeport Public Library will be re-joining Bibliomation with a go live date of November 14th.

Bridgeport has already rocked our Evergreen world. Our acquisition libraries were frustrated by a bug that limited purchase orders to 20 line items from a selection list. Bridgeport stepped in and funded the fix; this morning, a library created a purchase order with 38 items. We couldn't be more pleased and we're all looking forward to welcoming Bridgeport back into the Bibliomation fold.

Back to School!

For most of Bibliomation's schools, the first day has been delayed thanks to Irene. However, our friends at Equinox software got their data transferred into our Evergreen servers before the storm hit. Bibs, items, and students are all ready to go for our school media specialists once they have electricity to access them.

We're still training (and rescheduling hurricane-disrupted trainings) and working out new routines and workflows with the schools, but their data is ready to go. Next up, Bridgeport Public Library!

-Kate




image by Flickr user strangelibrarian

It’s Official – Bibliomation is an (almost) all-Evergreen consortium

On June 7, 2011, all of Bibliomation’s public libraries became Evergreen libraries. This fall, the school libraries will start their year with Evergreen and two more public libraries will join Bibliomation, bringing our total public library membership to 60.

We’ve been up and running on Evergreen for almost two months now and while it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing (what migration ever is), we’re finding our way and establishing some best practices as we go.

We’re over the moon about Ben Shum’s work automating our monthly reports and Jessica Venturo’s reports in the staff client. We’ve got data any which way our libraries want it. Now that we’re settling in to circulation and cataloging in Evergreen, Mary Llewellyn is forging ahead with acquisitions and serials. We’re bringing our libraries’ feedback about these two newest components of Evergreen as well as everything else in our new ILS back to the community and we’re building a wishlist for future development.

Bibliomation is excited to be a part of the Evergreen community and we can’t wait to build an even brighter future for our libraries and our ILS!