Brad LaJeunesse,Systems Administrator

PINES Today• 44 member public library systems • 252 libraries in 123 counties• 8.5 million library books and other items• 1.6 million active cardholders • Over 17 million items checked out in

FY06

The Evergreen Project

• Evergreen Integrated Library System (ILS) was developed using Open Source software.

• Software development began in June 2004

• All PINES libraries migrated to Evergreen software on September 5, 2006.

• All bibliographic and patron records were migrated from the former system.

D-DaySeptember 5th, 2006

What we did right• We included library staff in the software

development process– This gave them a sense of pride and

ownership• We performed multiple migration dry-

runs.– Library staff participated in the dry-runs.

What we did right• We sent our patron data to a vendor for

clean-up and formatting– It was a big task off our plate– Vendor has experience with the… idiosyncrasies… of our data

Hindsight is 20/20• On D-Day, when we needed to be

sharpest, we were all exhausted and had hardly slept

• The GPLS Helpdesk Manager’s position was vacant on D-Day

Hindsight is 20/20• In order to troubleshoot certain issues,

we had to increase logging to debug levels on production.

• We didn’t train library staff with real, live data – We used a “demo” system with fake demo

data

Hindsight is 20/20• We didn’t anticipate an immediate and

significant increase in usage– For example, holds increased 30%

• There is simply no good way to coordinate 252 libraries

What’s next?

Well, besides that…

Georgia Systems PINES Systems

Where Do We Go from Here?

• Develop Acquisitions and Serials module

• Work on OpenNCIP, so Evergreen can communicate with other ILS’s.

• Develop a children's web-based catalog

• Credit Card payment via catalog

Where Do We Go from Here?

• More integration with GALILEO

• Online library catalog that can be used on mobile devices

• Patron reviews and ratings

PINES online catalog:

www.gapines.org

Evergreen software development:

www.open-ils.org

Brad LaJeunesse bradl@georgialibraries.org