As you might imagine, the folks at ESI talk to a lot of Evergreen users, vendors and advocates in our work lives. Many or most are librarians, some customers of ours, some are orthogonal vendors, and some could be called competitors -- though I'd find it hard to think of another ecosystem of "competitors" where the buzz-word "coopetition" is more fitting.
Over the last couple weeks several people have shared with us a strange bit of FUD. (For those not familiar with the term, FUD stands for “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.” It's the practice of disseminating negative, and often vague or intentionally misleading information.) The people from whom we have heard say that they were told Evergreen cannot handle libraries of their size -- the library is just too big and complicated for Evergreen -- and they should just look elsewhere. The thing is, we're not talking about a 20-campus, 30-million item ARL with 15,000 serials subscriptions and 100,000-item/year EDI ACQ requirements. This was a medium sized library, with just a few branches and under 300,000 bibs, some light serials and ACQ requirements, and processes in the range of one million circs per year. Now, I bet many of you, like me, have heard things just like that before from, in particular, vendors of proprietary ILS'. As the success of Evergreen in libraries both large and small has continued, despite their best efforts to the contrary, that drum beat has, of course, died down a bit. The problem is, the claims we're hearing are being made by a vendor that purports to provide support, implementation, hosting, migration, training and development services surrounding Evergreen. The statements being related to us are patently false, and are being made to libraries that are either interested in using, or actively attempting to use Evergreen. When I heard this I was incredulous. Why would a group that claims to provide services surrounding Evergreen tell their prospective customers such provably false things to people who came to them for advice and direction? How could they be so wrong about the functionality and scaling capability of Evergreen? Why would they provide such factually incorrect advice and direction, instead of connecting the people with questions to folks that have answers? And, yes, they know where to find data, evidence and answers. I suppose, though, that it doesn't matter why. In the end, the only way to fight FUD is with the light of truth and evidence. So I ask that you all please join me personally and everyone else here at Equinox in actively pushing back against this sort of misinformation. Whether meant maliciously or not, the spread of misleading or downright false information hurts our entire community. Letting such things stand by not addressing them with facts will only allow those false statements to gain some amount of legitimacy through inertia. I don't want this email to be seen as a battle cry. While I have in the past and still do encourage everyone to write publicly, honestly and analytically about their successes -- and failures -- using Evergreen, to help us all collectively learn from each individual group's experiences, I'm not looking for that sort commitment or investment. I have three objectives today: to raise awareness of this specific issue, because it is so disturbing to me personally and harms us all in the end; to remind everyone on this mailing list that each of us has the opportunity to help spread the empirical, evidence-based information about Evergreen; and to request that those here in the community that feel they have a representative story with Evergreen to make themselves available for questions and clarifications. While I and my coworkers at ESI have the opportunity to talk privately to more community members that many others do, we are certainly not in an entirely unique position. If you hear of vague or misleading information being promulgated, please take a moment to politely address it. Or, if you don't feel comfortable or qualified to speak with specific evidence, you can always direct someone with inaccurate information to the community as a whole. We're a pretty accepting group, and we can answer pretty much any question if we know it's being asked. If it doesn't seem like a situation where a mailing list is appropriate, I am always happy to privately help clarify any misconceptions regarding Evergreen. I know there are others out there that also do this all the time, publicly and privately. If you're one of those people, and you are willing to risk being asked to spend even more time helping clarify and correct misconceptions, please let the rest of us know. So, I guess that is sort of a battle cry. I think, though, that this is a proper battle to pick. Thanks, all, -- Mike Rylander | Director of Research and Development | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source | phone: 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457) | email: [email protected] | web: http://www.esilibrary.com _______________________________________________ OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION mailing list [email protected] http://list.georgialibraries.org/mailman/listinfo/open-ils-documentation
