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Linux.com had a nice article about Evergreen, the open source ILS developed by Georgia Public Library Service. The article also made it to Slashdot. There really wasn’t much new in the article to people that have followed Evergreen, but it is still an interesting read even if you are familiar with the project, and a good read for anyone else that might be interested in an Open Integrated Library System (ILS). Some of the article highlights include Brad LaJeunesse quoted rattling a list of problems with their previous proprietary ILS that includes “Scalability. The ability to treat organization units as individual entities. Lack of granular permissions. Poor customer service. Lots more.” While not all of these issues impact all libraries the same way as they do a large consortium like Georgia PINES, many of them apply to all proprietary ILS systems at almost all libraries. Another problem with proprietary integrated library systems that I hear from all types of libraries with different systems is the lack of enhancements. This is something that PINES Program Director Julie Walker was quoted as addressing in the article. She stated that sometimes feature requests and bug fixes happen overnight: “We suggest something one day, and the guys fix it that night, and the next day we see it!” Try that with your proprietary ILS vendor! I don’t mean to knock all proprietary ILS vendors – I’m sure that some are trying their best – but this is something they just can not do for a number of reasons: 1) They don’t want to spend the resources implement these type of enhancements and feature requests, and 2) even if they did, they need to do more testing to make sure it works with the way other libraries do there work-flow. There are other reasons too, but you get the point. They just can’t afford to be as agile as an Open Source system is – especially one with in-house developers.

You may be asking how much does it cost for this agility and for a system that does what you want and not what some marketing department wants? Well, Georgia had to hire two additional developers (they went from a total of 2 to a total of 4). Compared to what they would have had to pay for a new system, (according to the article, $15 million up front and $5 million a year for maintenance) that is a drop in the bucket, even if the developers are getting paid $100,000 a year each. Heck even if they cost $250,000 each, and you count all four, they are saving $4 million a year. The whole Georgia PINES budget is only $1.6 million and that, I’m sure, covers more then the ILS. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more libraries jump onto Evergreen and to Koha (another Open Source ILS that is designed for smaller libraries).

PS: While reading the article and Slashdot comments, I happened around a posting on the open-ils blog that says the Georgia PINES folks are going to collaborate with the University of Windsor on an acquisitions module. This is great news as it is the one piece that Evergreen is missing. Hopefully they can get something working. The acquisitions module can be the most complicated module and due to poor design and interoperabillty with other budgeting systems in the library’s parent organization, can be the least effective. Hopefully the PINES/Windsor team can come up with a good acquisition system that can help alleviate this issue to some extent. If they do, Evergreen will have everything that the proprietary ILS programs have (and will probably do it all better, for less cost).