Very exciting news! On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Mike Rylander <[email protected]> wrote:
> [Pardon the cross-posting] > > Over the last eight months I have been actively working on a new > project for Equinox and under contract from OHIONET[1] called > FulfILLment[2], the goal of which is to create a hybrid > physical/virtual union catalog and ILL system for seamlessly sharing > resources between libraries, regardless of the ILS each library > happens to use. > > The thinking behind FulfILLment is simple -- take the power and > scalability of the Evergreen circulation environment, where we have > nearly full a priori knowledge of global system state and strong > algorithms to help get items to patrons, and project that “up” to an > ILL environment which, heretofore, has typically had little global > state information. > > Evergreen and FulfILLment have been, at the code level, the same > project thus far. Many of the recent improvements to Evergreen that > I’ve been involved with can be credited, partially if not completely, > to work on FulfILLment, including in-db ingest and import rulesets, > search speed enhancement, true facets and new features in BibTemplate. > This symbiotic relationship will, of course, continue because much of > what both systems do is very similar on a high level. > > Even accepting that Evergreen and FulfILLment will facilitate similar > ends at the institutions that use them -- specifically, getting items > into the hands of users -- and will share a great deal of internal > code and structure, we’ve now reached a point where the details of > many of the common goals of the two have been tackled. And so, on > August 2, 2010, Evergreen grew a spork[3]. > > FulfILLment now has its own identity and will now rise or fall in its > own Subversion repository, on its own server, with its own mailing > lists and (though I hope there will be a lot of crossover) its own > community. > > It’s not a f-f-f ... f-f-f ... you know, that f-word, because > FulfILLment will not compete with Evergreen. They will serve > different purposes and constituencies, and there will always be things > one can do that the other cannot. And, they will feed (on) each > other, both in terms of specific code and conceptual design, moving > forward. FulfILLment is, in the best possible sense of the term, a > derivative project based on Evergreen. > > So that’s the code part, but Open Source is about the community, > right? This is an open call to all: jump right in! Grab the code > (not much different than trunk Evergreen today, but that will be > changing fast), join the mailing lists (not much traffic, but if you > join then that can change!), hop in the IRC channel (#fulfillment on > FreeNode). Dip your toe in, ask questions. This should be a fun ride > -- it was the first time around with Evergreen -- and the more the > merrier. > > [1] http://www.ohionet.org > [2] http://blog.esilibrary.com/2008/03/13/the-path-to-fulfillment/ > [3] http://fulfillment-ill.org/websvn/listing.php?repname=FulfILLment > > -- > Mike Rylander > | VP, Research and Design > | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts > | phone: 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457) > | email: [email protected] > | web: http://www.esilibrary.com >
