[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] 226 subscribers

[Edward Corrado]

Don McMorris said the following on 3/22/2007 8:42 PM:
> Oh, and did I mention I occasionally get long-winded in e-mails? ;)
You did now! Anyway, thanks for the  tip on Mandarin M3. I see that it 
isn't Free (with a capital F),  but I'm occasionally asked about some 
inexpensive ILS options for small libraries and this might work for some 
of them. Of course, I'd rather recommend an OSS solution, but I don't 
know of any that are really geared towards really small places with 
people who are not technical.

Edward


>
> On 3/22/07, Don McMorris <don.mcmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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 books for outdated products (IE: I have a manual set for NetWare 3.11,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!
>>

-- 
Edward M. Corrado
http://www.tcnj.edu/~corrado/
Systems Librarian
The College of New Jersey
403E TCNJ Library
PO Box 7718 Ewing, NJ 08628-0718
Tel: 609.771.3337  Fax: 609.637.5177
Email: corrado at tcnj.edu