<div dir="ltr">Hi Wendell,<div><br></div><div>Full disclaimer: I work with Equinox but I'm responding with my community hat on. This also went to my spam so I'm hoping that if I respond that will help boost your message for wider visibility in case it went to spam for others. </div><div><br></div><div>Addressing: "What I need is justifications/reasons to convert to an open source ILS from a proprietary system. What are the advantages, both theoretical and real world and the potential pitfalls? Has making such a conversion saved you time and effort in administration and operation of the system?"</div><div><br></div><div>There is a fair bit of literature out there on this, some of which specifically addresses Evergreen and the community but my thoughts in bullet point form are:</div><div><br></div><div>* Security. We have to take on faith that closed source ILSes are securing the privacy of our patrons. Because of open source transparency that is not the case here.</div><div>* Support Mobility. If a given host ends up not working out for you for some reason it is not hard to move your system to a new support hosting company, something impossible with closed source without a full migration. There are real-world examples of this.</div><div>* Input on features. This gets a little fuzzier but input with traditional vendors on feature sets is based purely on a cost-benefit ratio. In the open-source world, even if you aren't directly employing coders there are ways to contribute to and influence things.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm sure there are other things as well but those are off the top of my head and something to hopefully get discussion rolling.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 10:35 AM Gragg, Wendell E <<a href="mailto:WGragg@bryantx.gov">WGragg@bryantx.gov</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hello everyone. This is my first post here, so if I am posting in the wrong place, please feel free to let me know.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Our library system (3 branches) is considering a move from Polaris to Evergreen and we are going to need to jump through a number of hoops in this process, beginning with the point of my post, justifying the conversion.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">What we are looking at is using a hosted solution due to the fact that our city IT department will not allow us to have anything but a Windows based server. Currently, we have a production server, telephony server and a test server, all
running Windows and MS SQL.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Currently, we have approximately 204k bib records, around 49k patrons and an annual circ between 500-600k. Only two of our branches circulate.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I have received quotes from three companies (Mobius, Equinox and Emerald) for hosting and migration services and all three would come well under the approximately 40k per year we are paying for Polaris maintenance, so financially it would
make sense. What I need is justifications/reasons to convert to an open source ILS from a proprietary system. What are the advantages, both theoretical and real world and the potential pitfalls? Has making such a conversion saved you time and effort in administration
and operation of the system?<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">One of our biggest hurdles in getting this approved is going to be the cyber security section of our city IT department. They are quite aggressive and demanding (oh the stories I could tell…), so I will need to gather information on that
too. Any advice there would be greatly appreciated, especially if you can impart any knowledge as to the security aspects of Evergreen and/or the hosting providers I mentioned.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Please feel free to contact me off list if that is your preference.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks in advance, <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Wendell<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Wendell Gragg, MSIS<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Automation Services Supervisor<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bryan+College Station Public Library System<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bryan, TX<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">979-209-5613<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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