1. Evergreen: an enterprise strength OSS solution for library ossification, Part 1. John Fink Digital Technologies Development Librarian McMaster University

2. My relationship with the ILS, 1995-2008: 3. Hey but... Whatisan ILS? 4.

It's anIntegrated Library System , software that...

Tells people what books and magazines a library has ( catalogue)

Handles checking them out to people ( circulation)

Usually helps with ordering stuff ( acquisitions)

And other functions.

5. They replaced... 6. In other words... It handles a lot of what we typically get in our heads when we thinklibrary , even though the nature of the library especially in academia has changed dramatically over the last fifteen years or so, with the rise of databases, websites, reference services over IM and SMS, things like that. 7. But about fourteen years ago, when everything was changing, just around the time I installed Slackware and bought a jar of hot sauce over the Web and thoughtholy crap, this is the future , libraries pretty muchweretheir physical collections those books and magazines and had been since, well, the invention of libraries. 8. And the ILS, then, was amajorthing. 9. It ran onImportant Machines : 10. 11.

And it cost alotof money.

12. And we paid.We paid because we couldn't do it ourselves, and the benefits that the ILS gave us over the card catalogue were wonderful. 13.

• And even though the money is a lot, the issue isn't really money...

14.

Libraries and librarians like open and free standards and working with other libraries and the public.

That's why we made interchange standards like MARC, Z39.50 and SRU, and, oh yeah, loan all those books out to people with no upfront costs.

15.

But to traditional proprietary companies, interoperability isundesireable...

... because it means you haveoptions ...

... which means you might go somewhereelse...

... so they (generally) will only support a minimal amount of interoperability

16. So, we're going somewhere.

What is Project Conifer?

In 2007:

Laurentian University

University of Windsor

McMaster University

In 2008:

NOSM and Algoma University

17. We're doing this because:

All of us, in one form or another, have had proprietary software companies fail us; whether it's because the software or hardware is being end-of-lifed, and migration costs are exorbitant .

And nowadays, we're smart enough to take some measure of responsibility for the operation and development of our own software.

18. So we decided, in early 2007, to move off our various proprietary ILS systems to something called Evergreen.We formed the Project Conifer to do this. 19. But first, for the uninitiated

What is Evergreen?

It's an ILS that...

Is scalable...

Built on open standards...

Runs on cheap-ish hardware...

And is open source!

20.

That sounds terrific.Why isn't every library everywhere doing this?

As an industry, we'reconservative. We'reafraid of change.

Many many different pieces == many many places to break.

Install process gettingbetter , but...

New ways of doing things == learning curve...

...but...

21.

Right now, Evergreen is sort of how Linux was back in my hot sauce ordering days workable , yes.Lots of installs, even.But still scary.Not trivial to install.Not how we're used to doing things.

Notsafe .

22. Break the shell and you'll find magic. 23. 24. So we've got ths project, but:

It's not...

Provincially comprehensive

Official at any sort of high level

Its own, separate entity

Operational (May 2009!)

25. Fortunately, we're not alone

Examples of Evergreen installs:

Georgia PINES (~280 libraries)

BC SITKA (18 libraries)

Michigan Library Consortium (Welcome GRPL!)

The Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative

UPEI

And eIFL-FOSS in Nepal, Zimbabwe, and Armenia.

26. So it's proven, but...

At the moment, it lacks what we would consider more academic features.

These are due in with version 2.0 later this year.

And other things, like internationalization, a Z39.50 server, a better admin interface...

...these come in 1.4 (this month!)

27. At the risk of sounding like this guy: 28. Or (maybe) worse yet: 29.

We wantfreedom.We'rescared:

Of being told we can do something but then having it taken from us

Of being locked into a platform that is dying a slow death due to corporate takeovers or an arbitrary technology shift.

Of dependencies.

30. tl;dr If you can't open it, you don't own it. 31.

• So really, it's less a hey this software is free and we don't have to pay for it woo-hoo kind of thing and more a holy cripes we need to take a little more interest in what, exactly, this piece of software long the central kernel of the library is doing.

32. Because it'snotcheap there are hardware and opportunity costs involved, and just aboutanychange means at least some modicum of training, and a whole lot of headache. 33. Ten years on? 34. One year later, they went out of business.