Hi all,
As many of you know, the Evergreen Outreach Committee has been working
since 2015 to increase Evergreen's visibility to the larger library
community. As part of this effort, we have scheduled programs at ALA
Midwinter meetings and annual conferences that showcase Evergreen to
potential and existing users. These programs have included a focus on
innovative catalog features during the 2017 annual conference in Chicago
as well as a program on the new web client in Denver last month. More
information on the latest program is available at
https://evergreen-ils.org/evergreen-project-represents-at-ala-midwinter/
Due to the limited funds available through the community, the Outreach
Committee tries to plan dynamic programs that also don't place too high
of a burden on the funds that support this effort. However, during our
program at Midwinter, we had an unanticipated expense for audio-visual
equipment, which cost the project a little more than $1,000. The cost is
high for the Evergreen project to support. I therefore am putting out a
call to see if any Evergreen organizations would be willing to
contribute a small portion of the fee to help offset the expenses for
this program. If several organizations contribute a small amount of
money, I am confident we can quickly replenish the community funds that
supported this program.
C/W MARS and MassLNC have already contributed some funds to offset this
expense, leaving about $775 that needs to be reimbursed. If you are
interested in contributing to support community outreach, you can donate
by following the donation instructions at
https://evergreen-ils.org/conservancy/. Also, please send me a direct
email letting me know so that I can track how much has been donated for
this specific purpose and can give credit to your organization.
Finally, I wanted to leave off with a note on why I think it is
important for Evergreen organizations to support these Outreach efforts.
Conferences are where a lot of libraries do their system shopping, and
proprietary ILS vendors are highly visible at these conferences with
booths in the exhibit hall as well as meetings (or maybe breakfasts or
lunches). By scheduling Evergreen programs at these conferences, we are
also providing a way for system shoppers to learn about our system.
Growing our community of users ultimately benefits all Evergreen users
since a larger user base expands the potential for more vendors to
support the system and increases the number of people who can contribute
to code, documentation, testing, etc. All of this grown ultimately leads
to continued improvements of Evergreen.
I hope you can help us out!
Kathy
--
Kathy Lussier, Evergreen Outreach Committee Chair
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
kluss...@masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
