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.
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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.