[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Donate to Support Evergreen Outreach Efforts

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

As many of you know, the Evergreen Outreach Committee has been working 
since 2015 to increase Evergreen's visibility to the larger library 
community. As part of this effort, we have scheduled programs at ALA 
Midwinter meetings and annual conferences that showcase Evergreen to 
potential and existing users. These programs have included a focus on 
innovative catalog features during the 2017 annual conference in Chicago 
as well as a program on the new web client in Denver last month. More 
information on the latest program is available at 
https://evergreen-ils.org/evergreen-project-represents-at-ala-midwinter/

Due to the limited funds available through the community, the Outreach 
Committee tries to plan dynamic programs that also don't place too high 
of a burden on the funds that support this effort. However, during our 
program at Midwinter, we had an unanticipated expense for audio-visual 
equipment, which cost the project a little more than $1,000. The cost is 
high for the Evergreen project to support. I therefore am putting out a 
call to see if any Evergreen organizations would be willing to 
contribute a small portion of the fee to help offset the expenses for 
this program. If several organizations contribute a small amount of 
money, I am confident we can quickly replenish the community funds that 
supported this program.

C/W MARS and MassLNC have already contributed some funds to offset this 
expense, leaving about $775 that needs to be reimbursed. If you are 
interested in contributing to support community outreach, you can donate 
by following the donation instructions at 
https://evergreen-ils.org/conservancy/. Also, please send me a direct 
email letting me know so that I can track how much has been donated for 
this specific purpose and can give credit to your organization.

Finally, I wanted to leave off with a note on why I think it is 
important for Evergreen organizations to support these Outreach efforts. 
Conferences are where a lot of libraries do their system shopping, and 
proprietary ILS vendors are highly visible at these conferences with 
booths in the exhibit hall as well as meetings (or maybe breakfasts or 
lunches). By scheduling Evergreen programs at these conferences, we are 
also providing a way for system shoppers to learn about our system. 
Growing our community of users ultimately benefits all Evergreen users 
since a larger user base expands the potential for more vendors to 
support the system and increases the number of people who can contribute 
to code, documentation, testing, etc. All of this grown ultimately leads 
to continued improvements of Evergreen.

I hope you can help us out!

Kathy


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