Monday, November 29, 2010

The Coding has been Completed!

We have heard from Equinox - the coding for our K-12 schools/academics due date functionality has been completed!

The functionality centers around end-of-school year and hard due dates. One enhancement will allow schools to apply an end-of-year due date for their students' items. As the school year nears a close, no items will check out past this date. The other enhancement, the hard due date, will be used for faculty - they can check items out at any time during the school year and the items will be due at the end of the year.

For these two enhancements, Bibliomation had partnered with four library systems:
  • Conifer (Ontario, Canada)
  • Sage Library System (Oregon)
  • Kirtland Community College (Michigan)
  • MassLNC (Massachusetts)
This functionality will be added to the next releases of Evergreen and we will be able to test it for our 22 K-12 schools. The Lebanon Schools, already on Evergreen, will be able to use the enhancements for the end of their school year this June.

--Amy
==============
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Evergreen Software Development - News

Bibliomation's Melissa Lefebvre and Ben Shum submitted an Evergreen software enhancement that was recently accepted by the Evergreen community. Their "New Search" button has been added to versions 1.6.1.3 and 2.0. This button opens up a new Advanced Search tab from within the Evergreen staff client. It is a very nice addition!

Many people ask, "Just who are the core software committers to Evergreen?" This list of software developers is constantly expanding, but to see who currently has commit privileges to Evergreen trunk, you can go to http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=contributing:contributors.

Bibliomation is very pleased to have our software enhancement make it into the latest releases of Evergreen!

--Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Douglas Library, North Canaan is now LIVE on Evergreen!

The Douglas Library, in North Canaan, CT, is now live on BibliOak, Bibliomation's Development Partner Evergreen system.

The Douglas Library is the seventh CT library to be brought up on Evergreen. The other six libraries are The Beacon Falls Public Library, the Douglas Library of Hebron, The Jonathan Trumbull Library in Lebanon, the Lebanon Schools, the Windham Free Library, and the Sprague Library in Baltic.

Bibliomation has three more development partner libraries to go - the Slater Library in Griswold, the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village, and the Warren Public Library before we bring our development partner project to a successful close in early 2011.

If you have any questions about Bibliomation's development partner project, you can contact Melissa Lefebvre, Bibliomation's Open Source Project Manager, at mlefebvre{at}biblio{dot}org.

--Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.
Middlebury, CT

Friday, September 17, 2010

Bibliomation Speaking Engagements

We're spreading the good news about Evergreen!

Here are a couple of speaking engagements Bibliomation staff are involved in:

PaLA - Pennsylvania Library Association Conference
October 25th - "Evergreen Open Source Library Systems - Coast to Coast"
I'll be speaking along with Jed Moffitt of KCLS, Elizabeth McKinney of Georgia PINES, and Jim Corridan of Evergreen Indiana. The conference is in Lancaster, PA. I've never been to Lancaster before and I hear that it's lovely so I'm really looking forward to this trip.

More information on the conference program can be found here.

ALA 2011 - New Orleans
Melissa Lefebvre, Bibliomation's Open Source Project Manager, will be speaking with Jenny Turner of PALS (Minnesota) and Shae Tetterton, Project Manager for Equinox, Inc., about their Evergreen migration project experiences. The title of their program is "Project Manager's Jambalaya: 1 part MLS, 1 part open source, and a whole lot more!" This program is being sponsored by LITA.

Come check us out!

--Amy
==============
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Monday, September 13, 2010

Migration Preparations are Underway!

Our Evergreen servers have arrived! There are 18 servers in total, with enough power and room to handle our member libraries, plus room for growth!

We're just now working out the details of our migration plan. Melissa Lefebvre, our Open Source Project Manager, is sketching out our time line as I write this. We plan to bring our libraries up on a version of Evergreen 2.0, the release that King County is coming up on later this month. We'll start with our ten development partners - we will move them over to the new servers sometime in early 2011. Then we'll bring in the East Haven Public Library. We hope to have them up on Evergreen in early March. Then we'll focus all of our energies on migrating our 48 public libraries off of Horizon and onto Evergreen by Memorial Day weekend. After that, we'll move the Bridgeport Public Library and its branches over later next summer. Lastly, we'll make sure that our 19 K-12 schools are up on Evergreen in time for the new school year, September 2011.

Whew! That should keep us busy for the next year!

--Amy
============
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc. / terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Thursday, August 26, 2010

School is in session!


The Lebanon Schools are up and running with Evergreen. Lebanon Middle School and Lyman Memorial High School went live yesterday. The elementary school will be up with their new ILS on Monday.

Lebanon's move to Evergreen has been fantastic. The three librarians are engaged, supportive, and fun to work with. The libraries are popular spots for the students to spend time in. In short, the Lebanon school libraries are a vibrant new member of the Evergreen community.

The students know there's a new system and a few searched for books on the first day of school. Instruction begins in a week or two for the middle school students. Yesterday, the fifth graders had an introduction to the library and lined up enthusiastically to check out some fun reading material.

Lebanon Schools are Bibliomation's first Evergreen schools and we're off to a great start! The planned enhancements will only make next year even better - we can't wait!

KCLS provides a preview of their new Evergreen OPAC!

King County Library System, in Washington state, goes live on Evergreen at the end of September. Check out this video overview of their new, whiz-bang Evergreen web catalog:

http://rscel.evergreen-ils.org/node/1480

Friday, August 20, 2010

Let the coding begin!

It's now official - we have just signed off on the Equinox development quote for our Evergreen K-12 schools due date functionality.

This functionality will give all Evergreen academic and K-12 school libraries the ability to set end-of-semester due dates for their students. In addition it will provide the ability to set hard due dates for faculty.

ESI hopes to have development completed for us to test by the end of this calendar year. Bibliomation will have the Lebanon Schools live on Evergreen by the end of this month. If all goes well, the Lebanon Schools will be able to use this new functionality in June 2011.

Bibliomation has partnered with the following Evergreen sites on this development project:

Project Conifer (Ontario, Canada)
Sage Library System (Oregon)
Kirtland Community College (Michigan)
MassLNC (Massachusetts)

We'd like to publicly thank our development partners for their cooperation. We could not have moved forward with this project without them!

If you have any questions about this Evergreen development project, you can contact me at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

--Amy
----------------
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, inc.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

You came. You saw. You ate some ice cream

Yesterday's ice cream social was a rousing success, thanks to the enthusiastic attendance of 65 librarians from 23 libraries. Next time, I'll make sure to get less ice cream and more hot fudge - you are people after my own heart with your epic hot fudge consumption!

Our timeline generated a lot of interest, so I'll post it here:

The production servers are arriving and getting set up between now and the end of September.

We'll be profiling libraries throughout the fall, which we'll do by taking what we have in Horizon and translating it into Evergreenese. We'll be sending out questionnaires to clarify as needed.

Once we've got everyone profiled, we'll start entering rules and settings. We'll keep at that until we're done (it's quite the process).

We'll have the early training (the sneak peek training) from January until March, but the real training will take place in late April.

Go Live is slated for Memorial Day weekend, 2011!

We'll keep all of our members posted on all things Evergreen - keep asking questions!

-Kate (ksheehan@biblio.org)

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The Windham Free Library is now LIVE on Evergreen

The Windham Free Library is the fifth library in Bibliomation's Development Partner project to go live on Evergreen. The library began circulating items on the BibliOak Evergreen system this morning!

Windham Free joins the Beacon Falls, Hebron, Lebanon, and Sprague libraries on BibliOak.

To view the Windham Free Library catalog, you can go to:

http://acorn.biblio.org/windham

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

I scream, you scream


We all scream for Evergreen! Oh, and ice cream...

Bibliomation members are invited to an ice cream social at Middlebury Public Library. We'll hear from BibliOak members about their experiences with Evergreen and the open source team will demo some exciting Evergreen features.

When: August 10 10:00 a.m.
Where: Middlebury Public Library

We'll start with the Q+A with the development partners, then we'll have ice cream during the demo!

You supply your questions, we'll supply the hot fudge!

RSVP to Joan at jshamato@biblio.org

CC image from D Sharon Pruitt

Friday, July 9, 2010

Evergreen Enhancements for K-12 Schools, Academics

Bibliomation is partnering with four other Evergreen sites to sponsor some enhancements that will benefit academic libraries and K-12 schools.

The enhancements will allow Evergreen libraries to apply hard due dates and end-of-semester dates against specific patron profile groups.

The four partners working with Bibliomation are:

Sage Library System (Eastern Oregon)
Kirtland Community College (Michigan)
MassLNC (Massachusetts)
Project Conifer (Ontario, Canada)

The enhancements will be developed by Equinox, Inc. A cost and time estimate should be provided to Bibliomation and its partners in the coming week.

For more information, you can contact me at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

And Then There Were Three ...

The Jonathan Trumbull Library, in Lebanon, is now live on Bibliomation's Evergreen system. They came up on May 18th and are happily chugging along.

Jonathan Trumbull is the third development partner to be brought up on BibliOak. They join the Beacon Falls Public Library and the Douglas Library of Hebron.

To see their web catalog, click here.

To read the Equinox press release, click here.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Evergreen 2010 Conference: Acquisitions

The following is a post from Mary Llewellyn, Bibliomation's Database Services Manager and Lead Cataloger. She summarizes her notes from the Evergreen Acquisitions Development update, "Evergreen Acquisitions Roundup," with Bill Erickson of Equinox.
----------------------------

The session that stands out for me was the Evergreen Acquisitions Roundup, presented by Bill Erickson of Equinox. I was very impressed with the direction the acquisitions module is taking. Many of the features our acq users currently have in Horizon are being developed in Evergreen, including the ability to upload order files from vendor resources such as Baker & Taylor’s Title Source or Ingram’s iPage. We’ll have the ability to define the tag and subfields that the information is coming from, so we won’t have to do much reconfiguring on the vendors’ sites for our libraries.

A feature that we don’t currently have that I think will be welcomed by our libraries is the ability to send EDI order files to the vendor from the Evergreen client itself. Currently the libraries using EDIFACT have to download the purchase order to their desktop, then send the file to the vendor using a third-party FTP client.

Another new feature is the ability of patrons to place requests for purchase that the library staff can review and either accept or reject. Patrons will be allowed to place title level holds on their own requests, and the system can send notifications to the patron about the status of the request.

Another feature that has me very excited touches on the cataloging module. They are developing the ability to have different MARC import profiles, and to designate certain tags to be kept when an imported record merges with/overlays an existing record.

The Acquisitions module will be included in Evergreen 2.0, which is coming out in “alpha” late summer 2010.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Growing Evergreen 2010 International Conference



The Bibliomation team just got back from our first Evergreen conference in Grand Rapids, MI, and we are all very jazzed from it, very jazzed, indeed. As I said to my boss, our CEO, Mike Simonds, "This was the best conference I've ever attended." Sure, there was the usual stuff of conferences - the networking, the keynote speakers, the ice cream breaks .... But what really stood out as different was the overall sense of collective enthusiasm I experienced. Nobody (-okay, one person, but I'm not sure what she was doing there in the first place-) was down on the software. I heard no wet blanket, "Oh, why doesn't the system do this?" talk, something I've been listening to for YEARS now at every other ILS vendor conference I've attended over these past fourteen years as a professional librarian.

Taking Ownership
I've thought some on this and I think that the reason why this conference was so fantastically enjoyable was that everyone there seemed to get that we were all in this together. The "Us v. Them" mentality did not present itself during the three days that I participated in roundtable discussions, impromptu meetings, user programs, and casual conversations with my fellow attendees.

Also, I discovered that this open source ILS community is rife with some amazingly talented, inspired, passionate individuals, who seem to share the sensibility that united we stand so let's get together and put on a show. I saw no egos on display - everyone seemed REALLY cool. When I asked Mike Rylander of Equinox why he didn't seem to have an ego the size of Toledo, he laughed it off in that "Aw, shucks" way he and the rest of the Equinox crew have about them.

Get Involved
Librarians love to share. For many of us, that's why we got into the profession in the first place. I have never been prouder to be a librarian than I am right now. I love the fact that I can help shape this growing Evergreen community in meaningful ways. For instance, I have volunteered to serve on the Evergreen reports taskforce and the governing committee for the embryonic, but quickly evolving Evergreen Foundation. Both of these opportunities came out of this year's conference.

I cannot wait for Austin in 2011. I hope to see you there.
Jump in. The water is more than fine. It is outstanding!

--Amy
=================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Monday, April 26, 2010

Equinox Releases Canned Reports for EG 1.6.0

Bibliomation is pleased to report that Equinox has made available a full set of canned reports for the Evergreen community. Bibliomation was one of three library partners who provided feedback to Equinox regarding these reports.

The reports are divided up into three main areas:

  • Library Collections
  • Library Patrons
  • Library Services
For more information about the specific reports, you can read more on the Equinox blog here.

We are all very thankful to the folks at Equinox for taking the time to develop this core list of reports. They will be greatly used!

--Amy

Friday, April 16, 2010

IMLS Grant Partners accept Bibliomation!

Bibliomation has received the exciting news that we have been accepted as the fifth partner into the IMLS grant project headed up by King County Library System, "Empowered by Open Source."

The following is an excerpt from our acceptance letter from Jed Moffitt, Director of Information Technology Services at King County:

Thank you for your request for admission as a partner to our IMLS Grant Project “Empowered by Open Source”.

As per the goals outlined in the grant, we are looking for at least three new library partners per year toward the goal of developing a peer-to-peer support model for public library migration to open-source systems. We are looking to partner with libraries that have strong visions and have made clear strides toward an open-source future.

On behalf of our IMLS grant partners and our growing RSCEL community, we’d be pleased to accept Bibliomation as a grant partner.

We’re excited about the open-source strategy and progress underway at Bibliomation, and look forward to working with you.
--------------------------------

King County is still looking for two more library system partners in 2010. It could be you!

-Amy
====================
Amy Terlaga / terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.

Evergreen Demos at CLA

Bibliomation will have a booth at this years Connecticut Library Association conference. Stop by to check out our new updated company logo, see how our BibliOak Project is going or just say “hi.”

We will also be demonstrating different aspects of Evergreen at our booth. The dates and times are below.

Monday, April 19

TIME

TOPIC

10:15am-10:30am

Staff Client – Searching

11:15am-11:30am

OPAC Bookbags and My Account

12:15pm-12:30pm

Staff Client – Patron Registration

2:15pm-2:30pm

Staff Client – Placing holds and pull list

3:45pm-4:00pm

OPAC Searching

Tuesday, April 20

TIME

TOPIC

10:15am-10:30am

Staff Client – Searching

11:15am-11:30am

OPAC Bookbags and My Account

12:15pm-12:30pm

Staff Client – Patron Registration

2:15pm-2:30pm

Staff Client – Placing holds and pull list

3:45pm-4:00pm

OPAC Searching

Monday, April 5, 2010

Bibliomation Requests to be IMLS Grant Partner

Earlier today I submitted our letter of application to become the first library to participate in the first wave of King County Library System's IMLS open source library system (OSLS) grant partners. The grant calls for King County to add three libraries per year for the next three years to their grant project. King County's initial library partners are The Peninsula Library System (San Mateo, California), the Orange County Library System (Orlando, Florida), and the Ann Arbor District Library (Michigan). The grant was awarded to King County last September 2009.

The following is an excerpt from Bibliomation's letter of application:

[...]
On behalf of Bibliomation, I respectfully request that you consider our consortium as a first wave partner of additional IMLS grant partners for the year 2010.

Bibliomation is a committed and active member of the Evergreen community. Some of our projects include:

• The contracting out of Dan Scott of Project Conifer to develop Evergreen-specific SQL training course materials. Dan spent two days training eight Bibliomation staff members to write Evergreen SQL queries. Bibliomation has worked with Dan to make these course materials available to all interested Evergreen libraries under the Creative Commons license.

• The development of a collaborative-based Evergreen kids' catalog. Bibliomation was able to find three other Evergreen sites to help develop the project plan and functional specifications for this major addition to the Evergreen ILS.

Bibliomation has also brought up two small CT public libraries on our first Evergreen system. We plan to add at least six more public libraries and one school system before we migrate our entire consortium (48 public libraries, 23 K-12 schools) in the summer of 2011.

I believe that we will be a strong asset to your IMLS grant project.
[...]

-Amy
=================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Monday, March 29, 2010

The Lebanon Schools join BibliOak

The Lebanon Schools have just joined Bibliomation's development partners project. This K-12 school system joins the Jonathan Trumbull Library, in Lebanon, already a BibliOak partner, scheduled to go live May 18th. This bodes well for Lebanon students as they will be able to use the same ILS in both their public library and school library environment.

We are excited to have these three schools (elementary, middle, and high) join us since Bibliomation already has 23 K-12 schools as members and we need to test Evergreen functionality against specific school needs.

Bibliomation plans to bring up the Lebanon Schools at the start of their new school year this September.

--Amy
================
Amy Terlaga, Assistant Director, User Services / terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Douglas Library, North Canaan Joins BibliOak

The Douglas Library in North Canaan, CT is the eighth public library to join Bibliomation's Development Partner Project. Douglas Library is very close to the David M. Hunt Library, in Falls Village, another development partner library that recently signed up. There will be great opportunities for reciprocal borrowing on the Evergreen system between these two libraries.

Erica Joncyk, the director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village, was instrumental in getting the Douglas Library to join. Erica wrote in her letter of intent to us:

"I look forward to working with you and your team and the excellent service that Bibliomation is known to provide."

Monday, March 15, 2010

Falls Village and Sprague Join BibliOak Project

The David M. Hunt Library, in Falls Village, and the Sprague Public Library are the latest two Connecticut public libraries to join Bibliomation's Development Partners Project, BibliOak.

These libraries join the Beacon Falls Public Library (live March 3rd), the Douglas Library of Hebron (live March 8th), the Jonathan Trumbull Library (go live date - May 18th), the Slater Library of Griswold and the Windham Free Library (go live date - July 1st) as the sixth and seventh partners of this Evergreen pilot project.

Bibliomation staff will have plenty of experience running this consortial library system by the time we migrate our 48 public libraries and 23 k-12 schools sometime in 2011!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Evergreen Canned Reports - Testing

Equinox has delivered a set of 29 reports for Bibliomation staff to test. They fall into three broad categories:

  • Library Collections (10 reports)
  • Library Patrons (9 reports)
  • Library Services (10 reports)
I've already run a handful of them, and so far, they're looking very good. For instance, we really needed an Item Count by Shelving Location report (which I had forgotten to ask Dan Scott to help us write in SQL) and that report is found under Library Collections. It seems to produce the correct results, too.

Examples of some of the other reports:

  • Inventory List - Lists of titles and items by shelving location and call number range
  • List Items Added by Date Range
  • List Patrons with Outstanding Balances
  • Count Patrons Added by Date Range
  • Items Loaned by Receiving Library & Date Range
  • Items Loaned by Sending Library & Date Range
  • Count In House Usage by Library Circulation Modifier
If you're curious to see the full list of reports, feel free to send me an email at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

--Amy
===================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services

Douglas Library of Hebron is now LIVE on Evergreen

The Douglas Library of Hebron was the second library in Bibliomation's Development Partners project to go live on Evergreen this past Monday, March 8th. We can now start seeing how holds function between these two libraries.

We have a little bit of a break before the third library, the Jonathan Trumbull Library in Lebanon, goes live (May 18th). So it should be very easy to troubleshoot any consortial issues with just two libraries for these next two and a half months.

--Amy
==========
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Equinox Press Release about BibliOak

FYI

Here is Equinox's press release about the launch of Bibliomation's Development Partners Project:

"First Bibliomation Libraries Live on Evergreen"

--Amy

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

First Bibliomation Development Partner Goes Live!

The Beacon Falls Public Library went live this morning on BibliOak, Bibliomation's Development Partner Evergreen system. Beacon Falls is the first Connecticut library to go live on Evergreen. The Douglas Library of Hebron will quickly follow them next Monday, March 8th.

Kate Sheehan, our open source implementation coordinator, is spending the entire day with Beacon Falls library staff to help them get more comfortable with using this new whiz-bang open source ILS.

To check out our BibliOak Evergreen web catalog, click here

We here at Bibliomation couldn't be more thrilled for them!

The Bibliomation Open Source Team:
Melissa Lefebvre, Open Source Project Manager
Benjamin Shum, Open Source Software Coordinator
Kate Sheehan, Open Source Implementation Coordinator
-in conjunction with-
Mary Llewellyn, Database Services Manager
Robin Fitch, Cataloger and Trainer
Carol Yarrison, Help Desk Coordinator and Circulation Trainer
Jessica Venturo, Applications Support Specialist and Trainer

--Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation, Inc.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

SQL Training - Dan Scott Rocks the House

Well, we just completed two days of intensive SQL training with Dan Scott, and I have to write that it was all we were hoping for and more. Not only did Dan provide us with a comprehensive overview of the basics of writing SQL queries (as well as how to insert, delete, and modify in the Evergreen database), he also delivered to us the core set of library SQL reports we needed for our development partner libraries. Since two of these libraries are going live in March, this was very timely, indeed!

Oh, and for good measure, he also helped Melissa Lefebvre, our open source project manager, figure out how to customize each of our libraries' web catalog pages so that their specific library logo/image appears in the upper left hand corner of the web catalog display. Very cool!

Dan has contributed all of his course materials to the Evergreen community. You can find them here, as a link from his blog post about his two days with us.

Be sure to thank Dan for his efforts - dan{at}coffeecode{dot}net. This is a major contribution to Planet Evergreen!

Amy
===================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation
terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org

Thursday, February 18, 2010

PLA Conference - Evergreen Community Happy Hour!

Come join your friends in the Evergreen community at next month’s PLA conference in Portland!

We’re planning to meet up at Deschutes Brewery for beer and conversation on Thursday, March 25th, at 5:30pm.

Here’s some more info on Deschutes:

Deschutes Brewery makes several good beers and has a new restaurant/bar. Just take the tram up to NW Everett St. stop and you're right there. 210 NW 11th Ave.

http://www.deschutesbrewery.com

If you plan to come, please RSVP to me at terlaga{at}biblio{dot}org.

Hope to see you there!

Amy

=======================

Amy Terlaga

Assistant Director, User Services

Bibliomation

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Kids' Catalog Project Gets Underway

It's official - Bibliomation will be partnering with King County Library System (Washington state), the SITKA Libraries (British Columbia), and the PINES library network (Georgia Public Library Service) to develop the specifications for the very first Evergreen kids' catalog.

We will be collaborating with FGI, the Seattle-based web design firm that is also currently working with King County to develop a new interface for the Evergreen adult catalog.

Our first conference call should take place in the coming weeks. At that time we'll work on defining the business objectives of the project and identifying all areas of the project that need to be completed from a creative and technical standpoint. Then, we'll move on to the development of the project plan itself.

Once we have the project plan in place, we'll be looking for additional development partners. If your library system is interested in participating in this exciting and fun project, please drop me an email at terlagaATbiblioDOTorg.

Thanks!
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services
Bibliomation

Friday, February 5, 2010

True Confessions...

Our own Amy Terlaga was once an open-source-ILS-phobe. She tells the story of her journey from resistance to enthusiastic embrace in this month's Computers in Libraries magazine.

For our Connecticut readers, the article is available through iCONN.

Fear and trembling in Connecticut: (or 'how I learned to stop worrying and love open source') is a must-read!

-Kate

Friday, January 22, 2010

More on the Kid's Catalog

As regular readers know, we've been looking for ideas for a kid's catalog. We posted our original list a few weeks ago and since then, we've held a chat session with our members to brainstorm more ideas, including:

  • A title suggestion feature (in addition to spell-check)
  • Editable buttons that lead to searches or lists
  • Robust sorting
  • Moderated reviews that use screen names
  • An area for customizable text to promote upcoming events
  • Book suggestions/ Reading lists
  • Feed of Kid's Events

We're working with other consortia to develop a kid's catalog that includes all of the features we need (i.e. the features we currently have in Horizon) and as many of the features we want as possible. Keep the ideas coming!

-Kate

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Meetup at ALA Midwinter - SC LENDS and Massachusetts

At ALA Midwinter next week, we plan to meet with some of the library directors of SC LENDS (South Carolina) and the three networks in Massachusetts (NOBLE, MVLC, and C/W MARS) with plans to move to Evergreen. It will be sometime on Saturday - either the morning or late afternoon (3:30ish). (We're still coordinating schedules at the moment.) There's a room at the convention center that ALA has set aside for these kinds of informal meetings. It's called the Networking Uncommons and it's located in Lobby B of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, near the entrance to the Exhibit Hall and ALA Store.

This will be our first chance to chat with the South Carolina folks and I'm looking forward to meeting them, to see how their Evergreen system is coming along, what kinds of enhancements they still need, and where we might be able to share in some of the development effort.

If you're interested in participating in or just sitting in on the conversation, drop me an email - terlagaATbiblioDOTorg.

==================
Amy Terlaga
Assistant Director, User Services