[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] 226 subscribers

[Don McMorris]

Ok Brad... Here it goes!

My name is Don, in case you didn't know by the time you got here ;)  Well, Ok...

I'm 20 years old, living in a rural town in upstate NY.  I work in a
very small public library, and have since I started volunteering at
the age of 12.  By small, I mean we serve an area having just under
1,000 residents, have a collection of about 18,000 items, and an
annual circ of under 20,000.

It has always been my belief that information should be free, both in
ideas and in cost.  It was this that drew me to Linux when I was about
13.  I started with RedHat and Mandrake.  It really wasn't for a
couple of years before I really adopted Linux, however.   At that
time, I was using my residential broadband connection to host web
sites for some of my friends.  One friend I met online used this to
develop skills in PHP/MySQL, which he eventually used in a career.

Outside of computers, I just started getting into amateur (ham) radio.
 I am an Extra-class licensee, and am pending application for a 1x2
vanity callsign (my current assigned callsign is KC2QHO).  I would
eventually like to get into HF work for DX, but for now I am primarily
on 2m using a repeater.

Anyway, back to Evergreen. In late 2005 I believe it was, I was
looking for an ILS so that I could automate my personal collection and
share it.  Now, I don't have a huge collection, but what I do have I
think can be somewhat rare for the libraries' in the area (can you
believe there isn't enough space!?!).  Examples include manuals and
books for outdated products (IE: I have a manual set for NetWare 3.11,
2 complete sets of AutoCad R12, plenty of Windows 3.x/DOS guides,
books about the Internet when the Internet was a luxury item, and the
like.

Well, here's what my requirements were... Free of cost, functional,
not very resource-intensive (could dedicate a server, but of fairly
low power), have a Z39.50 server, support multiple libraries/branches
w/independent policies (for potential expansion), and some other
things.  Here's what I tried...
-> Mandarin M3: The base (cataloging, standalone PAC, circ, etc) was
free.  However, added functionality (such as Z39.50 server and web
OPAC) were pay.  Also, it was Windows-only, and I was planning to
become a Linux shop.
-> Koha: I tried the stock Koha, but there were some issues.  In
general, it worked OK... however, there were some language issues that
I didn't like.  Also, some of the functionality didn't seem to work as
it should.
-> A few others, which didn't work well at all

I eventually came across Evergreen in some online article.  At the
time, it was still being developed (I think Alpha came about 4-6
months later).  The description of it was a well fit into what I
wanted.  I felt it had the potential to shake the ILS industry.  In my
opinion, it was worth waiting for.  I attempted a few installs and
have helped some others.

I do lack a good understanding of programming, so unfortunately I
cannot contrib greatly.  However, on occasion, I will correct some
documentation in the dokuwiki.  For some initial installation issues,
I can help out.  Call me the first tier of support, if you will.

You can find me monitoring (and occasionally contributing to) the -Dev
and -General lists.  I am also in attendance of the IRC Channels
#OpenILS-Evergreen, #GAPINES, and #Code4Lib on the Freenode network.

See you around!