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State of the Open ILS

Dan Scott OLA SuperConference Friday, February 1, 2008. State of the Open ILS. Launch. On September 5th, 2006, Evergreen went live in Georgia PINES with: Online catalogue Patron self-service Cataloging Circulation Report 252 libraries, 8 million items, 1 system. Community.

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State of the Open ILS

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  1. Dan Scott OLA SuperConference Friday, February 1, 2008 State of the Open ILS

  2. Launch • On September 5th, 2006, Evergreen went live in Georgia PINES with: • Online catalogue • Patron self-service • Cataloging • Circulation • Report • 252 libraries, 8 million items, 1 system

  3. Community

  4. Why is Laurentian going green? • Our current ILS does not meet our needs: • Upgrading to the current supported version broke our bilingual notices • Most investments in customizing our ILS would be thrown away if we move to a new discovery layer or system – “API lock-in” • We have to migrate to new hardware anyway • Our systems librarian is a developer • We are not alone...

  5. Project Conifer • Consortial installation of Evergreen for academics (Laurentian, McMaster, and Windsor) – rough plan: • Deploy test cluster (5 beefy servers)‏ • Install, configure, start loading data • Test and improve • Usability – collect feedback, improve, and iterate • Performance and load • Expected benefits include new services, cost sharing, interoperability, and skills development

  6. Let's get the ugly stuff out of the way

  7. Myths and misinformation • “Evergreen makes the same mistakes as traditional ILSes; what we need is a loosely coupled system built on a service oriented architecture (SOA)” • The heart of Evergreen is the Open Service Request Framework (OpenSRF) – an SOA that uses JSON over XMPP server as the service bus and Perl, C, Java, and Python* as service method implementation languages • Evergreen currently looks like a traditional ILS because all of the underlying components are surfaced to the user in a unified interface (staff client or catalog)‏

  8. Myths and misinformation • “Evergreen is great for public library consortiums with hundreds of branches, but doesn't scale down.” • Tell that to Carson Area – Crystal City Schools (who run Evergreen for their high school libraries)! • My own experiences: • I develop and test Evergreen on my laptop (1.5 GB RAM) – currently loaded with 50,000 records • I build and distribute Evergreen in VMWare images that run happily in 512 MB of RAM

  9. Myths and misinformation • “Evergreen forces a top-down hierarchy on the libraries in a consortial implementation.” • While its administrative model does support a hierarchical structure, you can create a flat hierarchy with an unlimited number of top-level members of that hierarchy • Each member can have its own policies, its own catalogue branding regardless of hierarchy

  10. Myths and misinformation • “Evergreen is too hard to install.” • How many times have you installed your current ILS? • Evergreen does have a lot of system dependencies, but install scripts for Debian, Ubuntu, and Gentoo now do most of the work for you. • I'll be giving an Evergreen install and customization session at Code4Lib 2008 during a 2.5 hour time slot

  11. Myths and misinformation • “We don't have the skills to support this ourselves.” • Nothing forces you to support Evergreen yourself; if you have an ILS today, you probably don't support that yourself • You can buy a support contract for Evergreen - and there are actually multiple businesses competing for your Evergreen support dollars!

  12. So what does Evergreen have today? Part 1: Patron interface

  13. Discovery interface

  14. Discovery: spell check

  15. Discovery: results

  16. Discovery: detailed record

  17. Discovery: shelf browser

  18. Socializing: Book bags

  19. Book bags: RSS

  20. Patron self-service

  21. So what does Evergreen have today? Part 2: Staff Client

  22. Circulation

  23. Patron interface

  24. Cataloging features • Built-in Z39.50 client with support for searching multiple sources • MARC editor with contextual help, support for templates, validation • Rudimentary authorities support • Can load authorities, but can't define them on the fly • 'Bucket' support for performing bulk operations on records and items

  25. Z39.50 client

  26. MARC editor

  27. Buckets: merging records

  28. Reporting interface

  29. So what's in the works?

  30. What about acquisitions? • Started by trying to integrate Apache OFBiz • We learned a lot, but OFBiz is HUGE • Opted to build what we need for fast iterations • Rapid progress in January: • OpenSRF plumbing for budgets, funds, picklists • Web interface built on Pylons • EDI capabilities to be provided by BOTS • Target: a complete “buy a book” acquisitions scenario by the end of February

  31. Tell me about serials • Financial parts of serials are being built along with acquisitions • Plan for serials patterns - overlay one or more basic calendar schedules, with exceptions • Example: 13 issues a year = 1 monthly + 1 annual • Example: 364 issues a year = 1 daily – 1 annual exception • Want to support easy check-ins, even though print subscriptions are declining – inspired by Kardex?

  32. Academic reserves? • No academic reserves functionality yet • Basic design for academic reserves: • Reserve item will be added to a class “bucket” • A class bucket will map to one or more instructors, a class name, and a class code • A class bucket will override its reserve items' location and circulation policy • Eventually we would like to integrate with course management software

  33. Documentation • Wiki • Mailing lists • The Book of Evergreen

  34. Are we there yet? • We're working on all of this; it's being built one line of code at a time • Advocacy work and day-to-day business operations has slowed down the pace of development for core team • My time is split between project management and development – oh yeah, and my ongoing hardware & software & collection development responsibilities • More dedicated skilled resources could propel this project ahead (welcome back, David Fiander!)‏

  35. But we're a geek-free zone! • If you don't have the skills in-house to set up and configure Evergreen, commercial support is an option for: • Installing and configuring • Migration • Training • Support • Custom development • Complete hosted system

  36. How do I get started? • Get on the mailing lists and the IRC channel • Please send us your acquisitions workflows (who does what and why) - requesting, selecting, approving, ordering, receiving, rolling over, and anything else... • Play with the demo site (http://demo.gapines.org)‏ • Both the OPAC and the Staff Client • Try out one of our VMWare images (you can run Linux on Windows!)‏ • Read up on the wiki

  37. Questions? • When we're out of time, let's go for coffee.

  38. References • Evergreen project: http://open-ils.org/ • Project Conifer: http://conifer.mcmaster.ca/ • My blog: http://coffeecode.net • The Evergreen logo is a trademark of Georgia Public Library Service.

  39. License This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ca/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

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