[Evergreen-general] questions from a newbie

[Diane Silver]

 Dear Evergreen community --

I stumbled upon Evergreen while researching options for web-development
software to create a small resource library for our organization.
It seems that Evergreen is far more powerful than what we need.  We're not
sure if that will be a hindrance (way too complex for our small operation),
or if it doesn't matter.

We have a few basic questions, which I'm hoping someone can answer:

1) It looks like Evergreen is back-end software for a library catalog of
existing items. i.e., it helps you build your library catalog using ISBNs
of published books or works from the library of congress. It doesn't look
like it's intended for orgs who want to display *their own* materials. Is
this right, or could we use it to create an online library for our own
documents, videos, powerpoints, etc.?

2) We don't need to manage circulation.  All of our resources are
electronic, and free.  Our users would just download each file.  We DO want
some analytics to track page views, number of downloads for each item,
searches, and similar usage. And we want access to the site to require an
authorized log-in, so it's not completely open to the public.  Do you think
Evergreen is the right tool?   I know Evergreen is used by large public
library systems.  Would all it's capability get in the way of the much
smaller scope of what we want to do, or could we just ignore the functions
we don't need (like circulation)?

3) It looks like getting set up is a bit complicated for non-tech-savvy
folks like me.  I took a peek at the documentation and quickly concluded
that we would need a system administrator to do this for us.  Is this a
function that can be contracted out?  Are there folks out there (maybe on
this list) who would be interested in such a role?  Would this list be an
appropriate place to post an RFP or would that violate the community
culture?  Could this be a discrete contract to set up the back-end system,
and maybe even build the front-end website, and then once it's built, would
it be simple enough to maintain ourselves (i.e., add new resources as they
get developed, manage users, etc.)?  I imagine the answer to that is, "it
depends," so let's say it would be a library of 100s but not 1000s of
items, and maybe a few hundred users, and we're pretty proficient at *using*
various systems, just not building them. So I guess the question is, how
much technical maintenance would it need?

4) What kind of time-frame (ballpark) would it take to set up an online
library with a few hundred items, for someone who has lots of experience
with Evergreen and wouldn't have the steep learning curve that we would?

Thanks to anyone who can provide some insights for us.  We love the spirit
and intent of the Evergreen community.

- Diane
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://list.evergreen-ils.org/pipermail/evergreen-general/attachments/20200822/5bd98b28/attachment-0001.html>