Laurentian University commits to Evergreen 2008 January 8
Laurentian University released a press release today announcing that Laurentian “intends to adopt Evergreen library system as its official library system.” As Dan Scott, the Systems Librarian at Laurentian, writes in his blog, most of us who have been following Evergreen development saw this coming since Dan has already made numerous contributions to Evergreen. As Dan wrote on the Open-ILS blog, “by selecting Evergreen [...] and contributing to the development effort, Laurentian University is taking the next step in solidifying that community.” Way to go Laurentian! Way to go Dan!
This is great news for people who believe in Open Source in Libraries. Whether a library choices Evergreen (or Koha for that matter), it is another bell in the cap for open source in libraries. I am really happy to see this announcement, and I know they’ll be more such announcements in the future. We have already seen consortiums such as VALE (Virtual Academic Library Environment of New Jersey) and universities like the University of Utah announce projects to investigate the feasibility of implementing Evergreen. While this is not to imply that VALE or Utah have made any commitment to migrate to Evergreen, it is a sign that academic libraries are taking notice of the good work started by Georgia. Also, we know that the University of Windsor has taking the lead in creating an acquisitions module for Evergreen. I think the future of libraries is becoming Greener by the day!
BTW: Evergreen also had another boost in the public library world on January 7 when The Michigan Library Consortium (MLC) and Grand Rapids Public Library announced The Michigan Evergreen Project