Continuation of Jed Moffitt's pre-launch updates to staff at KCLS

Attached is the third update in this series... 

Dear KCLS Staff:

Starting July 23, 2010, Jed Moffitt (IT Services Director at KCLS) began sending out staff emails to keep people informed of progress being made in the move toward Evergreen.

Attached is the first update in this series...

Dear KCLS Staff: 

KCLS put together a screencast for their staff introducing the new patron interface for their Evergreen system.  I'd say "OPAC" but it is much more than simply an OPAC.  

Take a peek:  http://www.kcls.org/evergreenopac/EvergreenOPACDemo.swf

Fantastic OSLS program at PLA.

Lori set the table with a brief rundown of the generations of Evergreen systems.  Georgia is now a grandparent, with BC following, and Bibliomation adding their first two Evergreen libraries this month.  KCLS to fall later this year.

Think about ongoing support for Evergreen:

Unlike vended/licensed systems--where there were no options for support other than the proprietary vendor--and open source system can theoretically be developed by one vendor, installed by another, and supported by yet another.

In our update call with ESI last week, ESI and KCLS stumbled upon a shared value and need for developmet of technical documentation.  ESI has had a specific project in mind--around 54 hours of work--for awhile.  KCLS needs this kind of documentation for our upcoming migration.

Congratulations to Amy Terlaga and Bibliomation for finding 3 co-development partners for an initiative to develop a Kids catalog on Evergreen.  It looks like Sitka, PINES, and KCLS have all hopped aboard.  Luck to us all, and hope we get a good product from it, but regardless, this is a great story and a first example of the potential of co-development partnering via the Evergreen Community.

We've had questions recently about our development plans for Evergreen OPAC.  We're attaching our project plan for OPAC development and implementation here in this post.  This document shows a high level schedule and milestones for this project.  Can you say "tight timeframe"?

Hats off to the KCLS Web Services Department including Lisa Hill, Melissa Falgout, and Josh Ring, who are orchestrating this complex project.