An Open Source ILS Glossary–HTML Format

June 23rd, 2010 by drdata

This is the HTML version of the glossary published in PDF format last week. It was converted to HTML by request. See version note at the bottom for version details.

An Open Source ILS Glossary
The Cathedral & the Bazaar A book written by Eric S. Raymond (O’Reilly, 2001). A must read if you are new to open source.

Librarians who read it and hear the poetry behind the details will realize that open source works very much like we do.

community In the open source world, there is much talk about the “community” of users and developers of the software. Both Evergreen and Koha have active communities. Effectively, these software projects and their development courses are directed by the community through email lists, IRC channels, and an array of communications mechanisms.
compiled Describes a program once it has been translated into computer language. It is usually not human readable. Proprietary software in the library world will usually only be available in a compiled format. In contrast, open source software is normally available as source code which is downloaded and compiled by its users. Hence, the underlying code can be read by the users of open source software and modified to suit their needs, if desired.
Equinox Software, Inc. The company founded by the developers of Evergreen. Its website is at: http://www.esilibrary.com/
Evergreen The first ILS designed to handle the processing of geographically dispersed, resource-sharing library networks. Evergreen is the open source software that runs a growing number of libraries and consortia. Its website is at: http://www.evergreen-ils.org/ and the Wikipedia entry gives more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_(software). It first went live in 2006 at the Georgia PINES consortium.

Evergreen is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

FOSS or FLOSS Free (Libre) open source Software
Free software Free software is not to be confused with open source software although the two often have similar objectives, they do not always.

See the Free Software Definition at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for a discussion of the philosophy behind free software.

For a discussion of the differences in philosophy between Free software and open source software, see Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html. The Wikipedia entry for the Free software movement is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement.

FUD Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Do you want to trust your library’s functions to open source software written by a bunch of tattooed, dope-smoking hippies with orange hair?

FUD, as the example above might demonstrate, is a useful marketing tool for sellers of proprietary software. By instilling FUD in prospective users about the viability, robustness, and support of open source competitors, proprietary vendors can make an open-source project with hundreds of developers and excellent support seem like a casual basement project for a few hobbyist programmers.

FulfILLment ™ FulfILLment is being developed by Equinox Software, Inc. under contract with OHIONET. It is an open source project designed to link library catalogs. When completed in about two years, it will provide library users seamless access to materials owned by libraries using FulfILLment-no matter which integrated library system his or her library uses. The project’s website is: http://fulfillment-ill.org/
GPL The GNU General Public License is an open source license that is used by Evergreen and Koha as well as most open source applications. There are various versions of the GPL and other kinds of open source licenses. The GNU Project’s website: http://www.gnu.org/. The discussion of its licenses: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html. Wikipedia’s article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL.
GPLS Georgia Public Library Service, the state library of Georgia. GPLS administers the PINES network and is where Evergreen was originally developed. Its website is at: http://www.georgialibraries.org/.
ILS Integrated Library System. Also known as a Library Management System (LMS). Wikipedia’s entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_library_system.
IndexData This firm has been active for 15 years in developing software to aid in indexing and searching. It developed the Zebra (http://www.indexdata.com/zebra) search engine used by Koha, as well as other applications. Evergreen also uses components developed by IndexData including ZOOM, among others. Its website is at: http://www.indexdata.com/.
Koha An open source ILS created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand. The Trust was set up in December 1996 to provide library service in Horowhenua District on North Island, New Zealand. The main library is in Levin. “Koha” is a Maori word for “gift.” Another gift from these two organizations is Kete, which is software for community collaboration and otherwise outside the scope of this glossary.

The community website is http://koha-community.org/ and more information on its history can be found at http://koha-community.org/about/ and at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koha_(software). It first went live in 2000.

The first U.S. library to run an open source ILS was the Nelsonville (Ohio) Public Library which went live with Koha in October, 2003. For a bit of history see the detailed A Koha Diary (http://www.kohadocs.org/koha_diary.html) or the shorter The Koha Project (http://www.myacpl.org/?q=about/koha)

Koha is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later. Free and paid support options for Koha are listed here: http://koha-community.org/support/

LMS Library Management System. Also known as an Integrated Library System (ILS).
migration If you change ILS vendors, your library’s data will have to be moved from one vendors’ database structures to another’s. Patron, transaction, and bibliographic records will have to be moved. This is normally not a process undertaken lightly. If the data are in a proprietary database, do you own your data so you can migrate them?
MySQL MySQL is a relational database management system that is used by Koha. Koha version 3.4 will add PostgreSQL support.

The company that developed the software and released the code under the GPL is now owned by Sun Microsystems, owned, in turn, by Oracle, a commercial vendor of relational database software.

Wikipedia entry: MySQL

OpenSRF Open Service Request Framework, pronounced “open surf.” This is the software architecture at the core of the Evergreen ILS and the FulfILLment consortial borrowing platform. Invented by the developers of Evergreen, OpenSRF provides transparent load balancing, high-availability and abstraction features to applications, allowing developers to focus on functionality instead of infrastructure.
open source Open source is a number of things. It is a class of licenses, a culture, a community, and a way of producing and sharing software. It is not to be confused with free software, although the two movements share many objectives.

In these senses, it is normally distinguished from proprietary licenses or software. Software produced by this method is released under an open source license like the GPL and the source code is freely available. There are a number of open source licenses. Generally, these licenses permit users to adapt, make changes, and improve software. The GPL, used by Evergreen and Koha, is a bit stricter than some other open source licenses and, among other things, also requires the adapted software be released through a GPL license.

The website of the Open Source Initiative is at http://opensource.org/. The Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

Open source is relatively new to the library world. One normally speaks of the alternative proprietary vendors as “legacy” or “traditional” vendors.

open source software advantages: * Easy customization for your own local situation. If there is not much interest in the community for a capability you require, you can develop it on your own or hire someone to add that capability.

* If there are support companies to support an open source application, such applications will have about the same support levels as one finds with vendors of proprietary software.

* Fast development - “release early, release often”

* Cost-it’s free.

open source software disadvantages: * Who supports it if you can’t?

* It’s free but it may not be cheap.

OSS open source software
OSS4lib A website that maintains a listing of free software and systems designed for libraries but is broader in focus than the ILS/LMS focus of this glossary. It was started in 1999. Its website is at: http://www.oss4lib.org/
PINES The Georgia statewide public library resource sharing network. It currently has about 50 systems, 275 libraries, and circulates about 17 million items a year. Evergreen software runs PINES. It was the first system to use Evergreen. The PINES catalog searches the largest installation of Evergreen that circulates over 17 million items a year from the 10 million item collection.

The PINES web home is at http://pines.georgialibraries.org/ and a short history 10 Years of PINES provides a retrospective on PINES.

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL, sometimes shortened to “Postgres,” is a powerful, open source relational database system that is used in Evergreen. It has more than 15 years of active development and a proven architecture that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, data integrity, and correctness. To learn more about PostgreSQL visit http://www.postgresql.org/.

Wikipedia’s entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL

proprietary A method for producing software that is normally distinguished from open source software. Proprietary software is not normally distributed as source code but as compiled programs so that one cannot see what the code does. It would normally be only supported by the company that manufactured it which can lead to vendor lockin. Since users cannot see the code, they cannot easily make permanent improvements or changes in it and have to wait for the next release.
proprietary software advantages: * Supported by the company you buy it from (can be good)

* Normally turnkey

* Support and documentation is said to be better than open source

* You don’t have to worry your pretty little head about your software.

* It has, historically, been a successful model. If it weren’t for companies using this model, many libraries would still be using card catalogs.

proprietary software disadvantages: * Supported by the company you buy it from (can be bad if it is the only option because of potential vendor lockin.)

* Slow development cycle which may have difficulty balancing the requirements of various users. For instance, what happens if your vendor will not develop something you require?

* Some vendors have been bought by firms that don’t know the industry and support and development have suffered.

Service Oriented Architecture A software architecture based on a collection of loosely-coupled, distributed services which communicate and interoperate via agreed standards. OpenSRF is an example of Service Oriented Architecture.
source code …any sequence of
statements and/or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language.” (Wikipedia). This is the code as it is written by the developers. Before it can be run on computers, it must be compiled into language that these computers can read.
Turnkey Of software, an application or suite of applications that a vendor sets up and all you have to do is turn the key and you are in business.
Vaporware Software that does not exist…but has been promised.
Vendor lockin If you buy from a proprietary vendor, it is protected from competition for your business by 1) your multi-year contract, and 2) from the challenges of data migration.
Zebra A high-performance indexing and retrieval engine used by Koha as its primary search system for bibliographic and authority data. Zebra was created by IndexData and is licensed under the GPL. For more information, see: http://www.indexdata.com/zebra.

Version note: This HTML version of the glossary is a revision of the content most recently published in PDF on the Equinox blog on June 2, 2010. The changes are: the new formatting, small bits of wordsmithing, and more information as various entries have been expanded. This version is now the master copy.

Bob Molyneux

June 23, 2010

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike.

Acquisitions Preview Tomorrow!

June 15th, 2010 by sfortin

Curious about the latest developments in the Acquisitions module?  Tomorrow, you can get an in-depth tour of Acquisitions in our Acquisitions Preview class! Staff in a variety of libraries and institutions, including public, academic, and special libraries, will find this module to be a valuable addition to the Evergreen ILS. In this session, we’ll discuss how to select items for purchase, create purchase orders, upload bibliographic records and holdings, manage funds, and invoice and claim items. This class is offered online from 1pm-2:30pm on Wednesday, June 16. The cost of the course is only $115 per person. To find more information or to register, contact training@esilibrary.com.

Survey Results For EG Compatible Products!

June 14th, 2010 by sfortin

In May, Equinox Software, Inc. asked the Evergreen community about their experiences with third-party products and the Evergreen ILS. Specifically, we wanted to know which products work with Evergreen, and which ones don’t. We asked about everything from barcode scanners to security products. The results are in and are available on the Evergreen wiki: http://www.open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=faqs:evergreen_faq_1 (See FAQ #16)

The survey is still open, so if you would like to add more results, please enter them in our survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8Z8Y69J

We’ll update the survey as we receive more results.

Things to Think About for a new Evergreen Library Consortium

June 9th, 2010 by drdata

[Apologies for reposting but I forgot the Creative Commons license on both formats and the acknowledgments on the PDF. Those are the only changes in this version.]

[This post is also available as a pdf Link to TtTA (310 KB)

We have seen two kinds of consortial migrations to Evergreen: new consortia where formerly separate libraries join together to use Evergreen—commonly with a shared union catalog—and existing consortia that move from legacy software to Evergreen. Historically, new consortia have been more common although there are currently a few major migrations of existing consortia to Evergreen in various stages of planning. Most of this post deals with issues involved in creating new Evergreen consortia.

This post also assumes that the consortium will be used to share resources within the member libraries. There are Evergreen consortia which limit resource sharing in various ways so these observations may not apply in individual situations. YMMV.

Evergreen is the first library software designed to run large, geographically-dispersed, resource-sharing networks. It is a new thing. Originally developed to run PINES, the Georgia public library network, Evergreen has proved to be popular, robust, and scalable. The fact that it is the first of a new breed of software, the demand for it from consortia that want to share resources has been gratifying. Mind, Evergreen is perfectly happy to run small libraries because it uses modern software practices but it was designed to manage large collections of libraries and that is our focus here.

What do you need to think about if you are contemplating moving to this kind of network for your libraries?

GOVERNANCE
The new consortium will need a structure for planning, decision making, and maintaining the integrity of catalog records, technical support, policy formulation, and financial details. Each Evergreen consortium does these functions some way but those ways vary greatly.

MIGRATING RECORDS
Various types of records can be migrated, including authority, bibliographic, item, patron, and circulation transaction records. When a group of libraries is brought together into a new Evergreen database, overlapping records have to be dealt with. Since bibliographic and patron records are the two types of records that most commonly have duplication in this situation, special considerations apply.

The records will be in the databases of the systems you are moving the libraries from and those records must be copied out of the legacy system and into Evergreen. This process involves understanding the structure and format of the records, the libraries, and the policies of the libraries. When these factors are understood, programs can be written that translate the data structures of those records to Evergreen databases. This is a procedure that requires patience and skill.

Making this process more complex is that in forming a consortium, the migration will often mean that records will be moved from a variety of legacy systems, each with different data structures. Moreover, an issue for the new consortium may include dealing with records of varying quality.

The records from different, previously separate libraries will be joined with those of others. If there is to be a union catalog, deduplication of the bibliographic records is recommended. “Deduping” is a process which groups the same bibliographic items in one bibliographic record with the various libraries holding that item listed by the entry. Done well, deduping will result in a catalog which is easier to use and more accurate.

Deduping is complex and given that cataloging and patron records are often of differing quality from the different libraries. Deduping takes a judicious mixture of programming and detailed examination of the various records. Normally, catalogers will make the final decisions with bibliographic records.

Given that so much of the use of a modern library begins with queries to the catalog database, the more accurate and fuller these cataloging records, the better. One approach is to have these bibliographic records upgraded either by independent firms specializing in this service or by those doing the migration itself. And here, too, there are choices: is it better to upgrade records before the migration or after? There is as yet no standard of practice to give guidance to this question.

POOLING PATRON RECORDS
Patron records do not have a standard such as the MARC, hence, the quality, use, structure, and local requirements vary enormously.

Will you have a single borrower card for the whole consortium or are the users keeping their old cards? If the latter, do patron barcodes overlap? If so, something will have to be done-either redoing the numbers or issuing new cards for the same reasons that items cannot share barcodes, neither can patrons. Barcodes/RFID tags are discussed below further.

If you are issuing new cards, this is normally done when the patron’s library goes live in Evergreen. It is a simple process. Do you want the patron records deduped? Patrons will frequently have multiple cards from other members in the new consortium.

Many consortia issue cards as the consortium adds member libraries so this is the perfect time to introduce your new, spiffy, single borrower card.

Typically, consortia will bring over patron names, patron barcodes, and address information. Other information might include current items checked out and fines but these data frequently do not come from patron files but, rather, come from other files for which there are usually non-standard formats. This information normally takes time and thought because these formats have to be understood. Often fines will be brought over only above some amount.

Do you want the records checked in the change of address registry? In the U.S., the Post Office maintains this registry and it is a method for looking for patrons who have moved in order to remove them from your current patron records.

Even given all these considerations, public libraries patron records are relatively uniform compared to academic libraries. Academic libraries often get their user records from the central administrative entity such as the institution’s registrar and updating practices vary, too.

POLICIES
An important set of questions that all consortia must consider revolves around policies. Will all libraries in the consortium have the same checkout policies (for example, books circulate for 2 weeks, one renewal, etc.) or will each have separate policies?

Consortia in which all members have the same policies will often discuss this configuration choice in terms of a “common user experience.” Consortia in which members have different policies might discuss this type of configuration in terms of flexibility for its member libraries. The former is simpler for the migration team; the latter may be easier for the new consortium-but is complex for the migration team.

Policies are a part of the Evergreen basic configuration. This part of migration also involves matters such as setting up the organizational units for each of the members (for example, a system’s branches); OPAC customization; setting up SIP services if required, and other such details necessary to customize the Evergreen implementation for the consortium’s members.

BARCODES/RFID
As a part of pooling records, item barcodes from the various libraries joining the consortium have to be studied to make sure that there is no overlap. Two different items cannot have the same ID number, so in an Evergreen union catalog, each item and each patron must have a unique identifier. If you have overlapping barcodes in the various collections, some items will have to be rebarcoded. Fortunately, we at Equinox and a partner have developed an improved method to rebarcode collections. Reading barcodes or RFID tags, the same issue is involved as RFID tags at their core simply relate the barcode number to the ILS, where an overlapping barcode will exist. There are alternative solutions to re-barcoding the collection available through RFID technology and may be worked through with the RFID vendor and Equinox at migration.

SERVERS
We will be happy to recommend a server configuration. Evergreen server configurations follow modern practice and will tend to use a number of redundant, “commodity” boxes, typically not immensely expensive as was the practice in the past. We will give you some specs and you can buy them yourself. Usually, the libraries we deal with will not pay taxes and can get these servers cheaper than we can as a result although recently we have found that our purchasing of large servers for our hosted customers has resulted in scale economies-the lower cost of these big servers is often cheaper than smaller servers even without taxes.

We also have libraries that have us host their libraries’ catalogs for reasons of convenience. Hosting allows the libraries to concentrate on offering library service, without having to worry about servers, power, bandwidth, backups, and the like.

The server configurations we suggest tend to be quite robust. By that we mean that the configuration is fault-tolerant and will not likely go down because if one server dies, the others can take up the slack. You can save money by buying fewer servers with the attendant risk that at times the configuration may go down in production. The software is also robust and failure is rare. However, with a more robust configuration it is rarer, still.

Because of the software architecture of Evergreen-most notably the OpenSRF piece-Evergreen is scalable. You will find that use of the collection will increase-particularly in a public library-so the demand on your servers will increase. Upgrading is relatively easy: buy more of these “commodity” servers, add it to your server cluster, put Evergreen on it, and you have upgraded.

And if you are thinking of buying servers to run Evergreen, PLEASE talk to us. A common error used to be to buy or attempt to use inadequate or misconfigured equipment. Fortunately, that problem does not arise much these days as an understanding of modern server configuration becomes common. And we are working on a document that will discuss Evergreen servers in a bit more detail.

Typically, users who buy their own servers will have us configure them remotely, then, commonly, we migrate the records into the new servers but these practices also vary widely. The Evergreen community has a number of members who manage their implementations from migration to support and others who pick and choose which parts of their Evergreen instance they will manage and which parts they will rely on others for. You are free to do what suits your purposes. It should be clear, however, that the whole process involves considerable technical expertise, experience, and attention to detail.

COURIER SERVICES
Moving materials around in a resource-sharing consortium is a complex undertaking. Users like this service and it will grow as these users discover it. When PINES moved from its legacy ILS to Evergreen, the number of these “holds” increased about 40% over the year. There are also similar anecdotes from other consortia. The logistical questions of running a large, geographically-dispersed courier service are not trivial-particularly with a 40% increase in traffic. PINES at one time considered hiring a logistics expert, for example, before the problems with the economy intervened. Logistics is one of those things in life that takes someone with experience to do well.

NETWORKS AND CONNECTIVITY
Libraries today require connections to the Internet and to other network services. Evergreen is no different and running a resource-sharing consortium has network implications also. One important issue is the fact that the move to Evergreen apparently results in an increase in network traffic similar to that seen with holds mentioned above. Predicting where and how is not currently possible but, we hope, in time-and with enough data-that it will be. Second, the network will require monitoring as the Evergreen consortium grows. Bottlenecks move around. If you add bandwidth here, then, in time, a bit more will be needed there.

SUPPORT
How much support will you be need? And what type?

Support can be for hardware and software and it can be for system capabilities. We do both and will quote you a price for either based on our anticipation of how much support you will need. For larger installations we will assume that you will supply “Tier 1″ support-that is, basic trouble shooting and functionality. Is the computer plugged in and help on “how do I check out a book?”

Of course, as an open source project, Evergreen has a community of users and the various mailing lists used by the are a key source of information and help.

We also find that libraries running Evergreen will opt for high levels of support the first year or two then, as they learn the system better, they take over more of the support functions and save money that way. How much of these support functions your group will take over is a training question.

TRAINING
Training is a complex issue and one that involves not only Evergreen functional training for day-to-day operations but it also involves strategic considerations. There is a lot to think about.

There are consortia running Evergreen which are completely independent of external support except through community resources. And, there are consortia moving from having external support to independence—and anywhere in between. Given that Evergreen is an open source project, your group can plan on and work towards independence and many prefer this option for reasons of cost, control over their environment, and continuity of their software environment. If independence is your goal, you will need more advanced training certainly in Evergreen systems administration and probably migration.

COSTS
What will Evergreen cost? It depends.

It depends on the decisions you make among the array of choices outlined here and also on the number, size, and configurations of the libraries you are joining in your consortium. For us to give you the costs, we need some basic data on these libraries which is why we ask for them. We will typically need to know:

  • the libraries being migrated
  • the number of branches
  • the number of bibliographic records at each
  • the number of annual circulations
  • the number of patrons
  • the number of policies your libraries will have and an understanding of SIP requirements
  • the legacy ILS you will be migrating from

You will also need to know about your barcode/RFID ranges of consortium members.

WHAT NEXT?
Ready to move to the future?

We will prepare a proposal and you or your group will choose what you want to do. You will likely have questions when you get our estimates and we can use those questions to get a better idea of what you want and, perhaps, to suggest alternatives.

After the details have been worked out, we will send you a contract that spells out what we have agreed on in legal terms. Your lawyers will look at it and suggest changes. Our lawyers will look at these changes if necessary. Then everyone signs the contract and we then start scheduling migrations and getting even more detail on the libraries being migrated.

THINKING BIG
A resource-sharing consortium is a different entity from individual libraries. That is obvious, of course. The most obvious change is to go from separate, information “silos” of individual libraries to a larger entity with more resources for the various libraries’ users. Library users like to have access to the longer tail and they have taken to these consortia every time they get the chance. In the Google era, many of our users are used to more access to information with fewer walls between information sources.

It is new, yes, however, thinking about the implications of these kinds of networks is lagging in the field. The scale of Evergreen is enormous and enormous is not 10 times a small library or 100 times a small library but a new thing. There are implications to this fact—for instance, the Evergreen Superconsortium—and given that we have had more experience with moving libraries to this new world, we can help you understand these implications in your environment.

Thanks to Jason Etheridge, Sally Fortin, Galen Charlton, and Jonathan Seitz for comments and helpful suggestions. Errors are, of course, mine.

Bob Molyneux
June 9, 2010

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike.

June 10, 2010

An Open Source ILS Glossary

June 2nd, 2010 by drdata

I have started this glossary as a kind of introduction to open source and the world of Integrated Library Systems/Library Management Systems. It is in PDF format. Comments welcome and I will add more terms related to the development process in a few days.

Thanks to Joseph Betz, Galen Charlton, and Jason Etheridge for comments and helpful suggestions. Errors are, of course, mine.

An Open Source ILS Glossary Link to the Glossary (490 KB)

Bob Molyneux

Preview the new Evergreen Booking Module!

April 27th, 2010 by Corinne

Cynthia Williamson of Mohawk College provided us a glimpse of the new Evergreen Booking Module during her Lightning Talk at the 2010 Evergreen Conference. Now, get an in-depth tour of Booking in our new Booking Module Preview! Staff in a variety of libraries and institutions, including public, academic, and special libraries, will find this module to be a valuable addition to the Evergreen ILS. Use the Booking Module to reserve cataloged items, such as books or DVDs in advance for your users, or use it to reserve non-bibliographic items, such as meeting rooms, laptops, A/V equipment, and more! This class is offered online from 11am-noon on Thursday, April 29. The cost of the course is only $75 per person. To find more information or to register, contact training@esilibrary.com.

Canned reports for Evergreen 1.6.0

April 21st, 2010 by Shae Tetterton

Introducing canned reports from Equinox Software! Due to increasing demand, Equinox has created nearly 40 canned reports and released them under the GPL.  The templates are compatible with all releases of Evergreen 1.6.0.

The reports are divided into three categories: Library Collections, Library Patrons, and Library Services. Ideas for these reports came from studying national and state regulations for library statistics as well as invaluable feedback from Kirtland Community College, Bibliomation, and Pioneer Library System. These reports are not meant to be exhaustive but to help libraries get started in collecting their daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly statistics. The reports can be cloned and manipulated to add or subtract additional displayed fields or filters.

The report templates are provided in the form of an SQL script that you can download directly. To ensure that you get the most recent version of the file in case it gets updated, use the “original format” link from this page. Users of Subversion can also retrieve it from the ILS-Contrib repository:

svn co svn://svn.open-ils.org/ILS-Contrib/ESI-Examples/reports

Once you have the EvergreenReportTemplates_1_6.sql file in hand, transfer it to your Evergreen server and import it into your database using the following command:

psql -U evergreen < EvergreenReportTemplates_1_6.sql

The specific invocation of psql may be slightly different depending on how your sysadmin configured Postgres.

Once you’ve run the SQL script, go to the reports page in the staff client.   You should see a new shared report template folder called in “General Report Templates (from Equinox)” owned by the ‘admin’ user.  Equinox customers who are running 1.6.0.0 or later can also file a support ticket to get the new templates installed.

Equinox is also launching a new service to create reports and report sources for Evergreen and Koha and share the reports with the community.  We’ll be making a formal announcement soon, but if you need help creating a new report, please contact us.

Here’s the list of reports.  More information about the displayed values and filters can be found in the report descriptions.

  1. Library Collections
    1. Brief Inventory List (by library & call number range)
    2. Detailed Inventory List (by library & call number range)
    3. Count Items Added by Date Range
    4. Count Items Added by Date Range & Statistical Category
    5. Count of Items by Library
    6. Count of Items by Shelving Location & Circulation Modifier
    7. Count Items Deleted by Date Range
    8. Count Titles by Library
    9. List of Items by Copy Status
    10. List of Titles & Items based on Circulation Modifier
    11. List of Titles by Physical Format
    12. List Pre-Cataloged Titles & Items
    13. List Titles Deleted by Deletion Date
  2. Library Patrons
    1. Count of Inactive Patron Accounts by Library
    2. Count Patrons by Permission Group & Home Library
    3. Count Patrons by Statistical Category & Home Library
    4. Count Patrons Added by Zip Code & Date Range
    5. Count Patrons Added by Date Range & Library
    6. List of Patrons with Open Transactions by Permission Group & Library
    7. List of Patrons with Open Transactions by Library
    8. List of Patrons with Outstanding Balances by Permission Group & Library
    9. List of Patrons with Outstanding Balances by Library
    10. Patron Mailing List
  3. Library Services
    1. Count Items Loaned by Receiving Library & Date Range
    2. Count Items Loaned by Sending Library & Date Range
    3. Count of Unfulfilled Holds by Library
    4. Count of Holds Filled by Library & Date Range
    5. Count In-House Usage by Library & Circulation Modifier
    6. Count Circulations by Non-Cataloged Type & Date Range
    7. Count Circulations by Patron Permission Group
    8. Count Circulations by Library & Shelving Location
    9. Count Circulations by Library & Circulation Modifier
    10. Count Circulations by Hour of the Day
    11. Count Circulations by Day of the Week
    12. List Available Holds by Capture Date (aka Clean Holds Shelf report)
    13. Open Pre-Cataloged Circulations

Koha, meet Equinox. Equinox, meet Koha

February 11th, 2010 by Galen Charlton

Equinox is  expanding our services to include support for Koha, the open source integrated library system initiated by the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand. Our press release can be found here.  We’ll focus on hosting, migration, support, and training at first, but we also offer Koha development services.

We’ll be building on our work supporting Evergreen, the expertise of staff at Equinox who have been active in the Koha development community, and the experience of several business partners to grow our Koha support offerings over time and provide good service to both Koha and Evergreen users. We believe that both Koha and Evergreen are good choices for libraries who want to automate using an open source ILS, and we are committed to being good vendor citizens in the Evergreen and Koha communities. The Equinox Promise is not just for our Evergreen customers — it is for all of our customers, no matter what open source library software we help them use.

On a personal note, I’m really looking forward to the chance to do even more cross-fertilization between the Koha and Evergreen projects. Each project has its own special strengths and development priorities, and there are a lot of good ideas that can be shared between them.

A new role for the Equinox community librarian

September 29th, 2009 by Karen Schneider

It’s with mixed emotions that I write this (from the 25th floor of the lovely Amway Grand Plaza in Grand Rapids, where a team of Evergreeners has been planning the 2010 conference), but very shortly I am changing roles in the Evergreen community.  I have an opportunity to return to library administration and to Northern California, two opportunities I (and my family) had hoped would be in our future at some point.

So to Brad and team I bid a fond adieu. In a short time I was able to be part of Evergreen’s first-ever user conference, help nurture into being a fabulous community-driven documentation project, and help build bridges of communication among all the Evergreen stakeholders.  I picked up some skills I knew I needed (nothing like a little XML to tide a gal over), and some skills I didn’t realize I needed (once I learned how to ask sponsors for conference funding, it became almost intoxicating!). I was able to give talks about open source from Indiana to Australia. Not a bad gig at all!

But I am by no means bidding farewell to the Evergreen community. You will continue to hear my voice as a strong advocate for open source software in libraries, and for Evergreen in particular — not just the software, but the wonderful magic bus that is carrying it forward, a bus overflowing with passionate developers, librarians, users, and other champions of engagement.

Youre either on the bus, or...

You're either on the bus, or...

History will prove us right

Those of us who “get” open source have sometimes been denounced for our support of what open source means in LibraryLand. We have sometimes  been condescended to as if we were cultic simpletons — as if passion and knowledge could not go hand-in-hand.

But the reality is that open source is here to stay. It’s a necessary alternative to the way we’ve done things, and not simply because it has forced new thinking from traditional software sources (who in many cases, despite their own public comments, use open source themselves within their applications).

Get in, Put the Keys in the Ignition, and Drive

I have spoken many times in the last several years about the bad state of affairs we librarians fell into in the late twentieth century, when we moved from designing and building the tools we use to a passive relationship with other folks’ software.

This sad situation has not been healthy for anyone involved — not librarians, vendors, or users.  It threatened the very existence of librarianship as a legitimized profession. If we are not engaged with tool creation, then who are we? (For more on this, read The System of Professions.) This passive relationship also turned vendors into vending machines, forcing them to produce software that reflected individual punchlists, not community vision.

Open source restores the tool engagement we need at a crucial point in our future, when it is clear that we are in the middle of a massive shift, and that everything related to information access, transfer, and ownership is on the table. We must be stewards of our future. We must drive that bus!

Last thoughts

I have had a great time at Equinox Software as Community Librarian. It’s been a wonderful journey, and I respect Equinox for having the insight to create the position in the first place.  I look forward to watching Evergreen continue to evolve, and to watch the community stride forward into the future.  I won’t say “I’ll miss you all,” because I’ll be right here — just in a different role.

Introducing Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley, Evergreen Developer

September 25th, 2009 by Karen Schneider

Equinox Software recently welcomed Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley to its Evergreen development team.

Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley

Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley

For the past three years, Lebbeous worked for an information security firm in Cleveland, Ohio, where he primarily wrote software using open source tools.  He has applied his passion for programming to diverse problems including vulnerability assessment, network perimeter management, log analysis, and more, and he is excited now to participate on a large open source project and to learn about how libraries manage information.

Lebbeous also enjoys history, following college football, and video games (sometimes to his wife’s chagrin).

We asked Lebbeous a few questions…

What is important about open source software?

Open source software is important for a lot of reasons, but one of my personal favorites is that it keeps developers honest.  That transparency in showing your work to the world not only discourages us programmers from taking ill-advised shortcuts, but it can also mean that other people catch our mistakes, or that they suggest better approaches to difficult coding problems.  Of course, this is sort of a technical reason to like open source, but consumers receive the benefits of that kind of collaboration, too.

Where do you see open source development in the next ten to fifteen years?

I think by that time we’ll reach a place where open source software is so mainstream that it will rarely be differentiated by a label anymore. Google is a big part of that, but certainly other, older forces are behind this trend as well.

I do, however, predict that along the way those seeking commercial advantage will test various copylefts in court, and that complex questions about intellectual property will continue to be raised. Software-as-a-Service will also provide a new context for debating the merits of open vs. closed source software.

When you get stuck on a problem how do you solve it?

The most obvious approach is to try to break the problem down into several smaller ones. If I’m still stuck, there’s always Google, and of course peers can be helpful in suggesting other approaches to a problem. Or, if I’ve got lots of different things on my docket, sometimes I just work on something else for a while. The next time I come back to the original problem, the answer might suddenly seem obvious.

What do you keep on your desk?

I have a picture of my wife, some coffee, a legal pad on which I sketch out ideas, and a pen. Beyond that I try to keep my desk as clear as I can. A clear desk with plenty of elbow room helps me think. Inevitably, however, junk accumulates until every once in a while I have to clear it all off at once.

What do you do to chill out?

I have a beer, of course! Or I may read. Sometimes the two can go together, but after more than two beers, that goes downhill. I may [re]watch some Star Trek; I have an awful lot of it on DVD.

Do you have any pets?

Not right now, no. My wife and I both had cats when we were children, but we’re holding off on getting pets until we buy a house (hopefully soon).