Evergreen - Future of the ILS

David Singleton, Deputy State Librarian Julie Walker, PINES Program Director Brad LaJeunesse, Systems Administrator Mike Rylander, Development Consultant

Georgia Systems PINES Systems

PINES Anticipated Growth

PINES Today
Y2k project started in 1999
44 public library systems
252 member libraries
123 counties
8.8 million items
1.6 million active cardholders from all 159 Georgia counties.

What Makes PINES Different?
The PINES library card is free to any resident of Georgia, and may be obtained from any PINES library.
The PINES library card can be used at any PINES facility as if at the home library.
Materials may be returned to any PINES library.

What Makes PINES Different?
Users may request materials delivered from any PINES library to local library, at no charge.
In FY06, over 452,000 loans between PINES libraries.
PINES libraries agree to a common set of policies, and procedures, with the goal that users have a consistent experience at any PINES library.

Executive Committee: Nine (9) elected representatives (Library Directors) from member library systems.
Function-specific subcommittees make policy recommendations.
Executive Committee meets quarterly and as needed.
PINES Governance

What are the Benefits?
For users: increased access to local library collections
For libraries: the State of Georgia assumes the costs of the automation system.
Access, not ownership, is the key.
Economy of scale:
PINES annual cost = approximately $1.6 million.
Individual library automation systems = over $15 million + approximately $5 million per year to maintain those systems.

Services from PINES Central
Training for 1,400 PINES staff in libraries across the state. Training is conducted regionally to reduce travel demands on libraries.
Responsibility for printing and mailing of overdue notices for all PINES libraries
Helpdesk via phone, email or web, available 24 hours/day.

“ It SIGNIFICANTLY expands the choices of books and other materials available to me. I appreciate this so much because I live in a rural part of the state with a very small local library.”
“ Allowing books to be checked out from other libraries is WONDERFUL. This way, the Pines System is like one gigantic library making available a tremendous selection of books regardless of where the books are physically housed.”
WHAT DO USERS LIKE BEST ABOUT PINES? Comments from the PINES User Survey

The Evergreen Project
The 5-year software contract for PINES ended in June 2005.
2003-2004: PINES staff conducted a comprehensive survey of the library automation marketplace
At issue: the unique needs of a statewide consortium sharing a centralized database and utilizing a statewide library card.
Is the software driving the policy/procedure, or is the policy/procedure driving the software?

What do PINES libraries need?
Enterprise-class relational database
Flexible system administration
Granular permissions structure
A complex holds matrix
Ability to treat member libraries as individual entities
Reports designed to correspond to annual reporting requirements

Evergreen Integrated Library System was developed using Open Source software.
Released under General Public License (GPL).
Alpha release (Online public access catalog, Cataloging, Circulation) debuted in July 2005.
Beta release in early 2006.
All PINES libraries migrated to Evergreen software on September 5, 2006.
Transactions, user records, and item records were migrated from the former system.

Cost Comparison 2 4 Local Tech Staff $200,000/yr $0 Software Licensing $200,000/yr (included, 3 years) Hardware Support $1,500,000 $350,000 Server Hardware Vendor ILS Evergreen

Fringe Benefits
We’re self-sustaining and control our own destiny.
We decide on development priorities.
No more difficulty trying to convince a vendor to develop important features for us (a minority customer in some ways).
The users of the software have direct access to the developers.

Evergreen Online Catalog Features
Streamlined searching from a single search box.
Google-like spell-checking and search suggestions.
Ability to select specific material formats from the online catalog’s front page .
Added content, including book cover images, reviews, and excerpts.
Randomized holds that include geographic location as a factor.
Scalability in anticipation of PINES growth.

Evergreen Online Catalog Features
In ‘My Account’, patrons can:
change personal login name;
change password;
place, cancel, and view holds;
modify how they would like to be alerted of available holds;
view fines;
view address information; and
view Bookbags (and share them)

Let’s take a look…
http://gapines.org

Evergreen Core Technologies
Database: PostgreSQL
Logic/glue languages: C and Perl, Javascript
Webserver: Apache mod_perl, C modules
Client side software: XUL
Server operating system: Linux
Server hardware: x86-64
Messaging core: Jabber (Ejabberd)

Evergreen Design
Server-side software is designed to run on inexpensive commodity hardware with Linux as the operating system.
The software is designed to run in a clustered environment, giving it enterprise-level high availability and failover.
Evergreen's staff client is cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux).

Open Application Plaform
The traditional ILS is
A catalog
An OPAC
A circulation system
Cataloging tools
We wanted more – we wanted a platform

Open Application Platform
We need a framework that
is easy to cluster
takes care of all the dirty work
has very low overhead
makes writing applications simple
is built on open, standard protocols
Given this we can create components as they are needed to provide solutions on demand – we don't need to anticipate every problem!

OpenSRF: Features and Benefits
We built a framework that
can trivially scale from a single server to hundreds in a tiered, redundant fashion
manages everything but the application logic, abstracting away everything to a consistent set of method calls
can easily handle hundreds of transactions per second, per server without any administrator tuning of the underlying components
turns writing applications, including entire ILS modules, into a matter of translating business logic into a set of simple Perl or C routines
Leverages existing open standards and open source software to avoid both duplication of effort and component lock-in

OpenSRF: The Pieces
OpenSRF consists of
A Jabber server – PINES uses eJabberd, and has tested jabber2d and an in-house custom server
The OpenSRF Router – provides application load balancing and failover services
OpenSRF Application Infrastructure – libraries and tools that turn simple business logic functions into seamless applications
OpenSRF Gateway – an Apache web server plugin that turns URLs into OpenSRF requests, and OpenSRF reponses into web-accesible content
OpenSRF DocGen – serves API documentation from the OpenSRF Introspection Service

Benefits to Evergreen
Dramatically decreased the time to go from service prototypes to production implementations
Allows developers to focus on core ILS issues
Increase capacity as needed using any source – no hardware vendor lock-in!
No single point of failure for any critical system or service
Rolling Upgrades – no need to take the system offline to upgrade backend services!

Where Do We Go from Here?
Migration of the six library systems waiting to become part of PINES.
Develop the Acquisitions and Serials modules.
Work with others on a protocol to share information across automation systems (Open NCIP).
Develop the children's portal for the online catalog.

Where Do We Go from Here?
Implement online bill pay for users.
Enhance social aspects of the catalog: user ratings, reviews, and comments.
Complete the Spanish translation for the online catalog.

Where do we go from here?
Deep links into the GALILEO databases.
Online catalog that can be used on mobile devices.
Possible partnerships with other institutions.

PINES online catalog: gapines.org Evergreen development: open-ils.org

David Singleton [email_address] Julie Walker [email_address] Brad LaJeunesse [email_address] Mike Rylander [email_address]

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Evergreen - Future of the ILS

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