3 December 2010
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR b.showers@jisc.ac.uk
CAMBRIDGE LIBRARY WIDGETS
3.2. They are implementing this system in stages, starting with licences, then moving on to trials
Book Sources Widget DEC 02, 2010 08:38A.M.
4. Requirements document 4.1. We did some more work on the requirements document, rating the ERMs using the ‘MOSCOW’ scoring system 5. Next meeting 5.1. Charlotte will arrange either an extended or additional meeting where we can work more on the requirements document and will email everyone with the details
OSSVIAB - EXPLORING OPEN SOURCE VIABILITY PROJECT
Evergreen vs UKCS NOV 29, 2010 12:27P.M. Okay, so hosted here (temporarily, while I sort out an eeor with hosting on this blog) you can find our scoring of Evergreen pre release 4 of version 2.0 when put against the UKCS v3.0. We have redacted the actual text of each specification out as UKCS is currently restricted to licensed use only, but if you do have a copy of the docuement with a right to use it, it’s pretty easy from here to paste in the compliance & notes columns. As & when UKCS becomes more freely available for wider use, we will publish the full unredacted document.
The book sources widget is nearly done now. We’re asking some other people to try it out, and it turns out the service it uses is a bit slow (which we’re trying to track down), but works splendidly if you’re a patient type. As soon as we find out which machine we need to beef up, we’ll add it to our catalogue.
MERI
Couple of caveats:
Notes from our meeting on 26th November
1) This is a viewpoint as expressed by the project team on functional compliance, not a guarantee of functionality. If you are considering implementing Evergreen we suggest you download & install a copy & do some testing yourself and / or talk to an actual live site or support company about it - please do *not* just cut & paste from here, take our word for granted & tick off the job as done!
DEC 01, 2010 08:45P.M. 1. Our current processes 1.1. Charlotte has added the Process Map to the blog.
2) We’ve been trying to hit a bit of a moving target, with testing done against different pre-release versions of Evergreen, so there may be areas where we’ve missed existing functionality, or simply got it wrong. If any Evergreen users out there would like us to correct any errors, please do get in touch & we will do so.
2. Shared Services Project 2.1. Angela has received confirmation that we have definitely had funding approved to extend the project and work on the JISC/SCONUL Shared Services project. Angela will attend a meeting in early December to discuss further details 2.2. Angela has passed the details of some open source systems to Justin Wood, who will sort out hosting etc
3) There are also areas where we may have made errors in config, leading to incorrect assumptions about functionality. We’ve hopefully minimised this, but once again, if anyone spots something they know is inaccurate, please let us know.
3. Visit to Sheffield 3.1. Angela and Regina visited the University of Sheffield to discuss their use of Verde
4) This is intended to be a living document. Even though our project
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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR b.showers@jisc.ac.uk
3 December 2010
funding has now finished we hope to continue work on this (certainly this blog will live on as a forum for posting any interesting Evergreen & Open Source material that comes my way), and update the response in line with any changes to UKCS and updates to Evergreen.
who share an interest in Open Source and libraries.
..and a couple of final points worth making looking back over the project..
Firstly, as has been discussed in various comment threads on here, UKCS is not a perfect standard. It measures quite basic core functionality, but in no way reflects the rich diversity of additional features that add value to an LMS. Understanding the limitations means you can take the results at face value - they are a guide to core functions only, and should not be the complete basis for any comparative decision based on the entire benefits of one system or another.
By way of a teaser, here’s my very brief initial thoughts on Evergreen & UKCS. :
a) We probably underestimated the sheer amount of work needed to undertake a proper reply to the UKCS document - it certainly opened my eyes on this, and I now have increased sympathy for all library system vendors / support companies who answer documentation like this on a regular basis.
Secondly, Evergreen actually stands up pretty well. b) ..in an ideal world, we’d like to see UKCS compliance documents made available openly for all the systems on the market.. certainly I’d love to see someone do similar for Koha.. I’d also say this needn’t be limited to Open Source.. we can all find out quite easily what our colleagues proprietary systems can & can’t do by talking to each other, so why don’t the vendors make a positive statement about the capabilities of their systems & publish as well?
Circulation is well developed, functionally rich, and flexible enough to, I think, work in just about any library environment. Acquisitions, being something new to v2.0 is quite adequate in current form. There were still some slightly rough edges & small missing bits in the version we tested, which hopefully will get resolved for the full release of 2.0, but most libraries could live with it and see little loss of ground from where they currently are. One thing that is missing is Rotating Collections (for moving stock around from library to library within a single service), but I get the feeling this is quite UK specific in use.. so someone would need to see about adding this function in.
Thats it for now - my personal thanks to JISC for providing some funding to do this, to all the project team who’ve worked on this with me, to those who’ve commented & interacted with us throught the project, and especially to all those we met over at ALA and who were so fabulous in hosting our visit to Laurentian - project could not have happened without the help, expertise and input of you all!
Cataloguing: I’m not a cataloguer, I freely admit this, but a colleague with far greater expertise in this area concluded this module to be very functional - again, there’s a few workflow things that could stand improvement, but nothing of major significance.
OSSVIAB - EXPLORING OPEN SOURCE VIABILITY PROJECT
Update - project nearing the end
ILL is the big(?) missing part for the UK market. Evergreen does interlending within a consortia to a very nice degree indeed - as good a set up as I am aware of! but in terms of a separate module for lending between services and that reflects the UK model with the British Library at the centre.. it just hasn’t been needed with no UK Evergreen adopters so far, thus is not there. To my knowledge quite a few UK libraries (both public & Academic) use 3rd party software for ILL, so note sure how big a gap this actually is.
NOV 29, 2010 09:02A.M. Okay, our nominal project end is today, so a quick update for everyone. First, the good news: I have run Evergreen pre-release 4 of v2.0 up against version 3 of the United Kingdom Core Specification (UKCS).
Management Reporting is extremely powerful, but not easy to get to grips with ‘out of the box’ - this is probably at leat partially due to quite sparse documentation - more on that later.
Then the not so good: The UKCS is currently is currently restricted to licence holders use only, so I can’t publish the whole thing. Instead I will publish the question numbers, and compliance *as I was able to see & test*, but not the text of each individual specifcation. I have reason to believe that the UKCS situation may well change in the near future, so when it does, rest assured, the whole response will be published.
OPAC - again, even the very much ‘out of the box’ product for me seemed very feature rich and adequate for most needs. I know there’s also some serious improvements coming in this area with the KCLS plans, plus the ability to use products like VuFind instead of the stock opac interface, so I’d say this is very much a strong area.
On that note, I would like to point out that even though the OSSVIAB project officially comes to an end after November 2010 with the JISC funding finishing, I will keep on updating this blog with information from our continued work on Evergreen - we aren’t stopping now, we hope to have another more ambitious follow on project coming along very soon, and I sincerely hope our work can & will be of use to others
Documentation - for me, the real achilles heel right now. Coming at this with a reasonable sysadmin background I found myself struggling at times - mainly with setup for things like the new Acquisitions features, plus occasional confusion over differing terminology. There may well be
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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR b.showers@jisc.ac.uk
3 December 2010
occasional errors in our UKCS response for the system due to that - as we find any we will correct them There is documentation out there, but its a little scattered right now (though improving), and a little sparse in some areas. This isn’t a show stopper, but I people need to be aware there’s a learning curve here - good job that as Evergreen is Open Source you can download, install & test it to tackle that nice & early before the pressure of any implementation starts!
interviews and investigations but it looks like that time has been a worthwhile investment.
..and as a final point, though not strictly UKCS relevant, don’t forget that there are now compaines out there in the UK who will offer support contracts & undertake development for Open Source LMS’, so couple that with the ever growing community of Evergreen users out there, if you implement Evergreen you really are not alone in terms of supporting & maintaining it. ..So would I implement Evergreen in a UK library? Well, yes. At least, I would once the full release of v2.0 is available. There would be items that need working out, and small missing pieces of functionality to address, but, quite simply so much of that is pretty UK specific, and won’t get done until someone here take the plunge & does it (or contracts to get it done). As a platform, it’s viable… now someone here needs to take the plunge with it..
LMS MASH
Tabbloid #9: 26 November 2011 NOV 29, 2010 02:43A.M. Open publication - Free publishing - More lmsmash
‘Post of the week’ has to go to the #salfmeri team - if you spotted their fairly inocuous looking blogpost and clicked on the link to google docs you will have been treated to the same sight I saw:
In a single document (5 pages long) they’ve managed to map out their whole e-resource management process in (to my eyes at least) an elegant and understandable manner. The map is the result of many hours of
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