[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Seeking funding partners for upcoming development projects

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

I'm pleased to announce that Georgia PINES has joined MassLNC to help to 
fund the Enhancements to Evergreen Alerts and Message Center projects. 
Thank you Georgia PINES!

We have also received some interest from Evergreen sites on the activity 
metric project.

MassLNC would really love to see all three of these projects implemented 
in a future release of Evergreen. If anyone is interested in the 
projects and can contribute some funds, even if it's only a small amount 
of money, please feel free to contact me at klussier at masslnc.org with 
your questions.

What do you get out of being a partner on one of these development 
projects? Putting funds to a development project is your opportunity to 
make a contribution to the future direction of Evergreen. It's a great 
feeling to see a new feature in Evergreen and to say to yourself "I 
helped to make that new feature happen." Budgets are tight everywhere, 
but by pooling our funds together, we can see some great new 
functionality at a lower cost for each partner. The recent MVC/CRA 
project (aka icon project)  is a great example of a development project 
where many small development contributions, combined with a couple of 
contributions from some larger sites, resulted in some nice improvements 
for the whole Evergreen community. Being a development partner also 
ensures that  you will be part of spec discussions and testing, allowing 
you to watch out for the needs of your users while the project is being 
shaped.

But, wait, there's more! If you participate in a MassLNC development 
project, your organization will be added to the MassLNC Wall of Fame 
where we acknowledge and thank all of the sites that have worked with us 
on development projects over the years - 
http://masslnc.cwmars.org/node/3067. The large number of libraries and 
consortia listed there is a testament to the great community we have and 
the fact that there are so many sites out there that want to contribute 
what they can to help make Evergreen better for everyone.

But that's not all! For a limited time only, if your organization 
decides to help fund one of these projects, you will receive a batch of 
cookies made by MassLNC coordinator Kathy Lussier (that's me). The 
cookies will be hand-delivered to you at the next Evergreen conference 
(or, if we're both there, at the next Evergreen hack-a-way).

Please take some time to look over these projects and let me know if 
you're interested.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Kathy

Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier

On 7/1/2014 2:45 PM, Kathy Lussier wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Today marks the first day of the new fiscal year for MassLNC, and our 
> development committee has identified a few new enhancements we are 
> hoping to sponsor over the next year.
>
> We have received proposals from Equinox for all three projects, but 
> MassLNC needs help to fund these projects. I am sending out this 
> e-mail to see if there are other Evergreen sites interested in helping 
> us fund any of these projects. For more details, you can e-mail me 
> directly at klussier at masslnc.org.
>
>
> Also, if you are already working on a similar project or just want to 
> provide some feedback for our proposed projects, please feel to share 
> your feedback on the list.
>
> These three projects are listed on the new Proposed Development 
> Projects wiki page at:
> http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=evergreen_features:proposed_development_projects 
>
>
> ACTIVITY METRIC FOR RELEVANCE RANKING
> The goal of this project is for a title's activity (circulations, 
> number of holds, etc.) to affect the relevance of that title when 
> retrieving search results. Google and Amazon use popularity with much 
> success when ranking search results. I think Evergreen would see 
> similar success if it were to incorporate activity into its relevance 
> algorithm.
>
> As an example, if a user were conducting a keyword search on "abraham 
> lincoln,"  there are many books, movies, etc. in most US libraries 
> where the words "abraham lincoln" show up in the title. There would be 
> no way to tease out the titles that are getting the most attention by 
> readers. In fact, a title like "Team of Rivals" ranks very low in our 
> search results even though there is a fairly high likelihood it is the 
> title the patron is seeking.  By applying a metric based on activity, 
> we might be able to see those more-recently popular titles floating 
> higher in the search results list.
>
> The current proposal is to make factors like circulation and hold 
> activity, record and item age, and item ownership counts available as 
> an activity metric. Each factor will embody a "popularity badge" that 
> a bib record can earn, and each badge will have a five-point scale, 
> where more points indicate a more popular record.
>
> The average of the badge points earned by each record will constitute 
> a "popularity star rating". The number and types of badges will break 
> ties for average popularity.
>
> A new sort axis of popularity will be created to sort first on the 
> cumulative popularity of each record, followed by the query-specific 
> relevance available today.
>
> ENHANCEMENTS TO EVERGREEN ALERTS
> I mentioned this project in the recent thread on problems with items 
> not checking in properly - http://markmail.org/message/rnm5s7wdxjgy3tym.
>
> This project would give Evergreen sites more control over which alerts 
> appear during check-in and check-out. The project has three components:
>
> - Separate checkin and checkout copy alerts
> - The ability to add temporary copy alerts from the checkin, checkout, 
> and item status screen
> - A library setting that allows sites to determine if some system 
> alerts should appear at checkin and checkout.
>
> MassLNC's full project requirements are available at 
> http://masslnc.cwmars.org/node/2764.
>
> This project is not slated to begin until Fall 2014 after sprint 1 of 
> the web client project is complete.
>
> MESSAGE CENTER FOR THE PUBLIC CATALOG
> This project would create a message center that communicates important 
> messages to patrons. Public patron notes will display here, and sites 
> will have the ability to configure any action/trigger notice to also 
> deliver a notice to the message center.
>
> MassLNC's full project requirements are available at 
> http://masslnc.cwmars.org/node/2927.
>
> Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!
>
> Kathy