[Evergreen-general] questions from a newbie

[Jason Stephenson]

Hi, Diane!

Thanks for your interest in Evergreen! I'm going to be blunt and tell
you that Evergreen does not sound like the right tool for your use case.

It is designed and implemented for a traditional library setting where
physical items are circulated to patrons. It is not geared for managing
collections of electronic materials or tracking their use. It requires
that records for materials are entered in standard MARC format, familiar
to libraries and alien everywhere else.

It is difficult to set up and maintain. It requires a certain level of
knowledge of GNU/Linux to be able to maintain an Evergreen system on
one's own. That said, the knowledge can be acquired, and there are
companies that will host an Evergreen installation and maintain it for
you, albeit for a fee.

You more likely want a dedicated electronic resource management system.
I am not very familiar with the software in that area, though I was
recently made aware of Archipelago. If you get past the marketing speak
on the main page, it sounds like it might be what you're looking for:
http://archipelago.nyc/

Hope that Helps,
Jason


On 8/22/20 9:40 AM, Diane Silver wrote:
> 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
> 
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