Evergreen (software)

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Evergreen
Developed by Georgia Public Library Service (GPLS) Public Information Network for Electronic Services (PINES) and the Evergreen Community
Initial release 2005
Latest release 1.4.0.4 / March 26, 2009
Platform Cross-Platform
Type Integrated library system
License GNU General Public License
Website www.evergreen-ils.org

Evergreen is an open source, consortial-quality Integrated Library System (ILS), initially developed by the Georgia Public Library Service for PINES (Public Information Network for Electronic Services), a statewide resource-sharing consortium with over 270 member libraries.

Contents

[edit] History

Evergreen development began in 2004, when GPLS determined that no available ILS software could meet the needs of PINES. Evergreen was written from the ground up informed by the complex and challenging needs of large shared catalogs, and as such is the first-ever "consortial library system." Evergreen 1.0 went live in September, 2006.

In 2007, the original Evergreen development team formed a commercial company around the software, Equinox Software, which provides custom support, development, migration, training, and consultation for Evergreen.

[edit] Adoption

The Evergreen ILS is deployed worldwide. Beyond PINES, organizations with live Evergreen implementations include SITKA, a library consortium in British Columbia; the Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative; the Michigan Library Consortium; as well as smaller libraries such as Kent County Public Library in Maryland, Marshall Public Library in Marshall, Missouri, and the National Weather Center Library in Norman, Oklahoma.

Other organizations committed to Evergreen include Project Conifer, a four-library academic consortium based in Ontario, Canada; the North Texas Library Consortium; and Natural Resources Canada. King County Library System has also signed a contract for Evergreen development.

[edit] Features

Development priorities for Evergreen are that it be stable, robust, flexible, secure, and user-friendly. Evergreen's features include:

  • Circulation: for staff to check items in and out to patrons
  • Cataloging: to add items to the library’s collection and input information, classifying and indexing those items.
  • Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC): a public catalog, or discovery interface, for patrons to find and request books, view their account information, and save book information in Evergreen "bookbags." The OPAC received a makeover in early 2009 with the new, optional skin, Craftsman.
  • Statistical Reporting: flexible, powerful reporting for retrieval of any statistical information stored in the database.
  • SIP2 support: for interaction with computer management software, self-check machines, and other applications.
  • Acquisitions, Reserves, and Serials Modules are under development and the first versions of these will be launched with Evergreen 2.0, due out in 2009.

Also see the Evergreen development roadmap.

As much as possible, Evergreen shuns workarounds and kludges often ingrained in library workflows and legacy software, such as the use of fake records and overloaded fields. The software is designed to scale up with organizational complexity as well as transaction and indexing loads. Evergreen's library policy uses an inheritance model which allows for rich, flexible, easily-tuned local control as well as high-level abstractions.

Evergreen also features the Open Scalable Request Framework (OpenSRF, pronounced "open surf'), a stateful, decentralized service architecture that allows developers to create applications for Evergreen with a minimum of knowledge of its structure.

Further information on Evergreen’s features is available on the project’s Frequently Asked Questions.

[edit] Languages used in Evergreen

The business logic of Evergreen is written primarily in Perl and PostgreSQL, with a few optimized sections rewritten in C. The catalog interface is primarily JavaScript with XHTML, and the staff client user interface is written in Mozilla XUL (XML + JavaScript). The user interface for most new staff client functionality is being built with the Dojo JavaScript framework. Python is used for the internationalization build infrastructure and for the EDI piece.

[edit] Obtaining Evergreen

Evergreen is free software available under the GNU General Public License. It can be downloaded free of charge from the Evergreen download page and installed according to instructions found in the documentation wiki. Help and information is available from the development and user communities on Evergreen's mailing lists. For those seeking commercial assistance with support, migration, or installation, these services are available through Equinox Software.

[edit] Requirements

Evergreen runs on Linux servers and uses PostgreSQL for its backend database. The staff client used in day-to-day operations by library staff runs on Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, or Linux computers and is built on XULRunner, a Mozilla-based runtime that uses the same technology stack as Firefox and allows for a browser-independent offline mode. The online public access catalog (OPAC) used by library patrons is accessed online in a web browser.

[edit] External links

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