Although the weather is finally getting warmer, Ohio is getting a bit COOLer as two more libraries join the Consortium of Ohio Libraries (COOL). COOL would like to welcome J.R. Clarke Public Library in Covington and Marvin Memorial Public Library in Shelby as its newest members to the consortium. Both libraries voted to join COOL at their May meetings. J.R. Clarke plans to migrate into COOL-CAT later this summer and Marvin Memorial is planning on migrating in the fall. They will be the 10th and 11th libraries in consortium.

COOL is a consortium managed and governed by a community of libraries, using the open source ILS, Evergreen. Technical support is provided by OHIONET in Columbus. For a current list of member libraries, visit http://info.cool-cat.org. For information about Evergreen, visit http://www.open-ils.org. Please contact Chauncey Montgomery at 740-965-3901 or montgoc1@oplin.org for more information.

Consortium of Ohio Libraries, Evergreen ILS, J.R. Clarke Public Library, Marvin Memorial Public Library | No Comments »

During the recent Evergreen conference in Vancouver, four newly elected members to the Evergreen Oversight Board were announced.

The Board is the executive team of the Evergreen software project that makes guiding decisions and leads the project forward.

The goal of the Board is to :
i. promote, support, and advance the development of the Evergreen software;
ii. support and facilitate the growth of the international community of Evergreen users; and
iii. foster and protect the Evergreen assets.

Current Members (Bold are 2013 elected)
Shauna Borger Indiana State Library
Galen Charlton Equinox Software, Inc. Chair
Stephen Elfstrand MnPALS
Rogan Hamby York County Library (South Carolina) and SC LENDS
Ben Hyman British Columbia Libraries Cooperative Vice Chair
Kathy Lussier Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
Elizabeth McKinney Georgia Public Library Service
Chauncey Montgomery Sunbury Community Library (Ohio)
Andrea Bunz Neiman Kent County Public Library (Maryland)
Yamil Suarez Berklee College of Music
Stephen Wills Beyond Print

Community Library (Sunbury), Evergreen ILS | No Comments »

Tony Bandy of OHIONET and Chauncey Montgomery of Community Library (Sunbury) will be representing Ohio at the upcoming Evergreen International Conference in Vancouver. They will be presenting a session at the conference.

Following is a brief description of their session:

While Evergreen continues to grow and innovate, more and more libraries and library consortium’s are moving to this amazing ILS system. However, for standalone libraries or newly formed consortiums, circulation within the system is a whole new game! From workflow to holds policies and those crazily-configured circulation rules, it takes both time and understanding to come to grips with the change. Given this, plan on taking this quick and enlightening tour of 5 themes you need to consider when implementing your library on an Evergreen consortium-level platform!

For the full schedule and more information, go to http://eg2013.sitka.bclibraries.ca/schedule/.

Consortium of Ohio Libraries, Evergreen ILS | No Comments »

A user survey was completed before and after migration to assess how user-friendly Evergreen is compared to previous systems. Participants were asked to rate how easy it was to complete basic tasks in the catalog. Responses ranged on a scale from “very easy” to “very difficult” Following is a list of tasks with the percentage of respondents that answered “very easy” and “easy”.

In all categories, with the exception of renewing items, ease-of-use increased in Evergreen. It is also worth noting that the survey was completed just a month after migration, so this represents going from systems that had been in place for years to a new system.

It is also worth noting that the survey was completed when we were still on Evergreen 2.1. We are now running Evergreen 2.3, which has a much more intuitive OPAC.

Evergreen ILS | No Comments »

On November 18, COOL-CAT will be upgraded to Evergreen 2.3. The upgrade includes a major overhaul of the public catalog. New features will include a simpler interface, auto-complete, and loan history, among others. The new catalog is also much lighter than the traditional OPAC, so it should be faster. The staff client also has some new features. For more information, go to http://evergreen-ils.org/blog/?p=818. We are all looking forward to the upgrade.

Evergreen ILS | No Comments »

Today the Germantown Public Library went live with Evergreen on the Consortium of Ohio Libraries shared catalog.

Evergreen is the open source ILS originally developed in Georgia and now in use by over 200 libraries in 22 states, and in 6 other countries. This count only includes reported installations, as anybody is free to download and install the software and try it out for themselves.

The Consortium of Ohio Libraries is a new consortium funded in part by an LSTA grant and supported by OHIONET in Columbus. Germantown is the second of the eight founding members to migrate onto the system.

If you have any questions about Evergreen or joining COOL, please feel free to contact Joe Knueven, director of Germantown, at 937-696-9998, ext. 10, or knuevejo@oplin.org or contacting the consortium’s president, Chauncey Montgomery, Director of the Community Library in Sunbury. He may be reached at 740-965-3901 or montgoc1@oplin.org.

Consortium of Ohio Libraries, Evergreen ILS, Germantown Public Library | No Comments »

Representatives from COOL libraries and OHIONET recently attended the 2012 Evergreen International Conference in Indianapolis. It was an excellent event and featured keynote speakers Jano Bacon, a leading community manager, engineering manager, consultant, and author, and Galadriel Chilton, Electronic Resource Management Librarian at University of Connecticut. Many of the sessions focused on future developments in Evergreen, especially features coming in version 2.2.

Many features will benefit patrons, such as auto-suggest, SMS, patron history (loans, fines, and holds), etc. There is a lot of development in the staff client, all of which should improve staff workflows. For example, Jeff Godin of the Traverse Area District Library did a presentation on using mobile devices for inventory and collection development.

All-in-all, it was a great conference and has COOL excited about what lies ahead for Evergreen and COOL.

Consortium of Ohio Libraries, Evergreen ILS | No Comments »