By Andrea Buntz Neiman, Project Manager for Software Development at Equinox Open Library Initiative
There is so much to look forward to in 2020 but before we get too far into Spring first, a look back at the last couple months of 2019.
October 2019 saw the most recent Evergreen Hack-a-Way, hosted by Indiana State Library for the third time. Nearly 20 Evergreeners gathered together at the Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park Inn to collaborate on Evergreen bugs, strategize about some larger development decisions, and of course socialize and play board games in the evenings. For those of you unable to attend, discussion sessions are available on YouTube. If you’re interested in hosting the Hack-a-Way for 2020, please see this email for more information.
In the Koha community, November saw the latest feature release of Koha with 19.11. The full release notes for 19.11 detail numerous bugfixes and enhancements, as well as 20 new features. One of the most interesting new features adds “Club Holds” functionality. This allows a club to place a hold on a title, and Koha will automatically place holds for all members of that club.
December brought news from the broader library world, with ExLibris signing an agreement to acquire Innovative. While it remains to be seen how this will affect the library software marketplace, it was a reminder to those of us on the open source side of things that Evergreen and Koha can never be bought or sold. Our communities keep Evergreen and Koha alive and vibrant, and make the decisions large and small about the directions of their products. We are grateful to all of you who are members of our communities.
Looking ahead into 2020, there’s plenty to get excited about on the Evergreen and Koha calendars! The Koha Community will have its 2020 Hackfest in Marseille, France the week of March 23rd. The Koha-US Community is also planning a Koha-a-thon online conference on April 23.
The Evergreen Community is scheduled to hold its 2020 Annual Conference from April 22nd through 25th in Atlanta, Georgia, sponsored by Georgia PINES. The Conference Committee is hard at work putting together a great event, and several Equinox employees are planning to attend so we hope to see you there.
Also in the spring, Evergreen is planning its next major release, version 3.5. Bill Erickson of King County Library System and Chris Sharp of Georgia PINES are co-Release Managers (Release co-Managers?) this time around, and 3.5 is scheduled for an April 1st release – no fooling! A Feedback Fest is planned for the week of February 17th, and Bug Squashing Week is planned for the week of March 16th. Both of these are great ways to get involved with the community.
As always, we wish you the best that the New Year has to offer and we look forward to seeing some of you in person this spring!