[Evergreen-web-team] EG/web team thoughts on newsletters
Jim Craner
jim at galecia.com
Wed Oct 17 13:14:12 EDT 2012
Re: "preparing newsletters inside Drupal" -- first up, I honestly just
ignored the newsletters until this thread but after going back and
looking at the ones in my archives, there is some *great* content
there. Nice job, Amy!
So this is actually a good issue for us to stop, step back, and look at
the bigger picture:
* The primary goal of the newsletter is to provide a regular look at
"high-level" news of importance in the Evergreen community.
* Some of this news is from content on an existing EG site, but a lot of
it looks like great stuff that only shows up in the newsletter. We need
to make sure this content is captured somewhere besides the mailing list
archives!
With that said, here's a suggestion for making the newsletter process a
little more modern:
* Instead of community members submitting items to Amy and them sitting
in her queue until the next newsletter, Amy (or someone else working
with her in this role) would enter each story as a news item ("Article")
on the Drupal site and "publish to the front page." That gets the news
out to the public -- and into the Google search index -- in a timely manner.
* We still want to publish the newsletter for those folks who don't
visit the website regularly or use RSS so Amy (or the Newsletter
Manager) would still periodically send out the newsletter with those
news items. But instead of just copying and pasting the whole item,
we'll want to do the "Title, first few lines or summary, then a 'Click
here to read more on our website!'" strategy.
We want to do this for each story so that the newsletter story isn't the
final step in engaging the reader on the topic but is instead a bridge
to the website, where related content is available AND where we can
easily monitor the reader to see which articles are being read and if
the viewers are coming from email, Google, other sites, etc.
* Drupal does have two modules that offer the ability to automatically
generate newsletters for community members that the Newsletter Manager
could use instead of just manually generating an email on the general list.
I recommend *against* using them in the foreseeable future because I
think we need to keep the general list as the primary email
communication vehicle. We can still offer individual
subscription/notification features on the website itself but the general
mailing list is "where it's at" right now :-)
{However, eventually (like 18-36 months out) we'd probably want to unify
mailing list subscription functionality and website authentication so
that Evergreen community members would have a single set of credentials
for all Evergreen-related functionality.}
I'd be happy to enter some of the older newsletters just as archived
"Articles" on the new site for history's sake. Amy, do you keep a copy
of all of those or should I cull through the archives?
Does anyone have thoughts or questions about this process, especially
Amy? :)
Thanks!
Jim
On 10/12/2012 02:33 PM, Lori Bowen Ayre wrote:
> Nice update, Amy! Web Team....can we prepare these newsletters inside
> Drupal? I'm thinking it would be nice to be able to make it look more
> like a newsletter and we may as well start archiving them there now if
> we can.
>
> Jim?
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Lori Bowen Ayre //
> Library Technology Consultant / The Galecia Group
> Oversight Board & Communications Committee / Evergreen
> (707) 763-6869 // Lori.Ayre at galecia.com <mailto:Lori.Ayre at galecia.com>
> Availability: http://doodle.com/loriayre
>
> Specializing in open source ILS solutions, RFID, filtering,
> workflow optimization, and materials handling
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Amy Terlaga <terlaga at biblio.org
> <mailto:terlaga at biblio.org>> wrote:
>
> Evergreen Newsletter / September-October 2012
>
> The Evergreen Hack-A-Way
>
> The first annual Evergreen Hack-a-Way is now underway in Duluth,
> Georgia and is being sponsored by Equinox. The goal of the
> Hack-A-Way is to provide an opportunity, at the midway point each
> year between conferences, for developers to meet in person and to
> continue the momentum they develop at the conference. This in
> person collaboration, while working on Evergreen coding projects,
> is extremely useful.
>
> In attendance are Dan Wells, Ben Shum, Thomas Berezansky, Rogan
> Hamby, Dwayne Nance from NoveList, Bill Erickson, Mike Rylander,
> Lebbeous Fogle-Weekly, Galen Charlton, Jason Etheridge, Chris
> Sharp, plus Dan Scott and a few remote folks on the Google Hangout.
>
> The agenda can be found here:
>
> http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dev:hackfest:egfall2012
>
> Look for an update on the Hack-A-Way in our next newsletter.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> FulfILLment Update
> by Suzannah Lipscomb
>
> The Pacific Library Partnership, consisting of three libraries in
> California, has contracted with Equinox Software, Inc. to test
> FulfILLment. The partnership consists of Los Gatos Public
> Library, Peninsula Library System (the city of San Mateo only),
> and Santa Cruz Public Library. These libraries currently use
> Koha, Millennium, and Evergreen as their ILS. Lori Bowen Ayre,
> The Galecia Group, is serving as a consultant on this project as
> part of the Open Source - Open Libraries project. The partners
> will be testing FulfILLment to see if it can meet their
> requirements for managing physical item resource sharing between
> independent library systems. FulfILLment was developed by Equinox
> developers with funding from OHIONET and other development
> partners including: the State Libraries of Ohio, Indiana,
> Illinois, South Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and WiLS. It is
> anticipated that FulfILLment version 1.0-RC1 will be available in
> the spring/summer of 2013.
>
> FulfILLment is generally described as an open source ILL software,
> but it is so much more. It is an open source, regional
> resource-sharing system between disparate ILS. It was designed to
> bridge otherwise incompatible software products so that different
> libraries can continue to use their current ILS while obtaining
> many benefits enjoyed by libraries using Evergreen in
> resource-sharing consortia. The development of LAIs (Local
> Automation Integrator) in FulfILLment makes this possible by
> allowing the participating libraries to obtain bibliographic and
> other relevant information from each library's current automation
> system and making this information accessible over the internet.
> FulfILLment is also scalable. If necessary, new custom LAIs can
> be developed in future versions of FulfILLment to allow even more
> libraries to join and enjoy all that FulfILLment has to offer.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> DIG Gathering
>
> On Friday October 5th, six members of DIG got together at Berklee
> College of Music in Boston, for what we hope will be become an at
> least annual opportunity to collaborate face to face outside of
> the Evergreem conference. In attendance we had Ben Shum, Kathy
> Lussier, Jim Keenan, Tim Spindler, June Rayner, and Yamil Suarez.
> The main achievement of our gathering on Friday was to do an
> inventory of what documentation sections exist in older official
> documentation (EG 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2), but not in the 2.3
> documentation. As well as tracking down what has made it to the
> 2.3 documentation already. One key issue that came up and that we
> tried to research is that we would all like to find an automated
> way, instead of the current manual way, to covert the older
> documentation that is formatted in the DocBook format to the
> current AsciiDoc format.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Evergreen Development – News
>
> The Massachusetts Library Network is starting its next round of
> development with a focus on improving the retrieval of search
> results in Evergreen.
>
> The MassLNC consortia have identified several possible
> enhancements for this project and plan to seek quotes for
> development in October. The enhancements MassLNC is pursuing are:
>
> ·Allowing MARC Field Weighting in Relevance Ranking without
> Breaking the Ability to Exclude Search Terms
>
> ·Activity Metric for Relevance Algorithm
>
> ·More Control Over Stemming
>
> ·Synonym list for search terms
>
> ·Ability to Browse by Author, Title and Subject
>
> ·Staff-Friendly Call Number Browse
>
> ·Traditional Operators for Boolean Searches
>
> ·Simple method for excluding electronic resources from search results
>
> ·Expanded Facets
>
> More detailed descriptions are available at
> http://masslnc.cwmars.org/node/2550.
>
> MassLNC is interested in hearing feedback on these enhancements
> from other Evergreen libraries and in finding partners to help in
> sponsoring this work. Send any comments along to Kathy Lussier at
> klussier at masslnc.org <mailto:klussier at masslnc.org>.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> The Bibliomation consortium has contracted with four different
> developers to produce thirteen different enhancements. To see a
> list of these enhancements, go to
> http://biblio.org/2012/10/10/evergreen-enhancements/
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Niagara Evergreen Consortium is funding the porting of
> organizational unit hiding in the JSPAC (Java Script OPAC) to the
> TPAC (Template Toolkit OPAC) in Evergreen open source ILS. They
> also originally funded this development in the JSPAC. Equinox
> developers are spearheading the development project. Equinox
> anticipates that the coding will be completed no later than the
> end of September. Once the coding is complete, it will be
> submitted to the Evergreen Community for inclusion in the next
> major release of Evergreen.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Evergreen Libraries - Update
>
> Missouri Evergreen has gone live with 4 libraries implemented so
> far. Poplar Bluff Public Library, Grundy County Library, Marshall
> Public Library and Carrollton Public Library are all now sharing
> their materials through the Missouri Evergreen Consortium.
> MOBIUS, a nonprofit library consortium based in Columbia, MO is
> hosting and managing Missouri Evergreen with LSTA funds from the
> Missouri State Library. Over the next year nine more Missouri
> public libraries will be joining. We hope to have more members
> join over the next several years.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> SCLENDS is bringing up three new county library systems in October
> - Lee, Clarendon and Lancaster counties.
>
> -------------------------------------
>
> On August 9th, Mt. Gilead Public Library and Cardington-Lincoln Public Library went live in COOL-CAT. Mt. Gilead and Cardington-Lincoln are the fourth and fifth libraries to migrate into the system. They join Community Library (Sunbury), Germantown Public Library, and Selover
>
> Public Library that migrated to COOL-CAT earlier this year.
>
>
>
> COOL-CAT is the shared Evergreen catalog of the Consortium of Ohio Libraries.
>
> -------------------------------------
>
>
>
> If you have any news for the next issue of the Evergreen newsletter, the November-December issue, please email this news to Amy Terlaga atterlaga at biblio.org <mailto:terlaga at biblio.org>.
>
> +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
>
> Amy Terlaga
>
> Assistant Director, User Services
>
> Bibliomation, Inc.
>
> 32 Crest Road
>
> Middlebury, CT 06762
>
> 203-577-4070 x101 <tel:203-577-4070%20x101>
>
> www.biblio.org <http://www.biblio.org/>
>
>
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