News from the Vermont Department of Libraries Newsletter:

At their February 23 meeting, members of the Catamount Library Network, which includes the Department of Libraries (DOL), Brooks Memorial Library (Brattleboro), Springfield Town Library, Rutland Free Library, Fletcher Memorial Library (Ludlow), and Waterbury Public Library, made the unanimous decision to proceed with their project using the Evergreen Open Source software system. The DOL is participating in this project with the vision that the new Catamount Evergreen Network will develop into a statewide integrated library system that includes public, school and academic libraries and which will also support the DOL catalog and the statewide interlibrary loan network.

This decision came after months of investigation, meetings and phone calls with members of Koha and Evergreen library projects around the country (including Vermont’s VOKAL Koha group) and conversations with Vermont librarians from public, school and academic libraries. The decision was also based on documentation and recommendations from Lori Ayre, a consultant with the Galecia Group. The DOL hired Galecia Group, based in California, in 2011 to create a set of “features” for the Koha system that could be used as a comparison with a similar Evergreen “features” list. Ayre is highly regarded in the library open source world and is knowldegeable about both the Koha and Evergreen systems. Her expertise and evaluation was a critical, objective component of the investigation process. The new Koha and Evergreen features comparison list, which was an essential tool in the Catamount review and selection process, is now being reviewed by the greater Koha and Evergreen communities. A working copy is available here: http://tinyurl.com/CatamountProject

Someone recently asked me for suggestions to ask of other libraries when doing your due diligence on an AMH vendor.  I was happy to get that question because too often I think that libraries don't do an adequate job of digging into the experiences of other libraries with vendors. And even when they do, oftentimes the person providing the reference seems to have some incentive to paint a pretty picture rather than giving you the harsh truth.  I guess if they tell you about something that hasn't gone well, it suggests they did something wrong.....  

I try my best to be as honest as I can be about my assessments of vendors and libraries too!  So, if you ask me, you will get an honest answer.  I urge libraries to do the same. No vendor is perfect and no procurement, implementation, migration is either.  Don't be shy about sharing what hasn't worked well or was HAS worked well.  As my therapist used to say....it's all just information.  

Anyway, here's some questions that I recommend you ask about a libraries work with an AMH vendor:

Mick Fortune has released the first results of this year's RFID survey. Mick does this survey every year in the UK.  This year, Alan Butters (Australia) and I asked Mick to try for a global reach with the survey and we succeeded.  The survey includes respondents from several countries around the world and include over 50 libraries from the U.S. and over 50 from Australia.