Unit 8 Computer Science
American Library Association
Library Technology R E P O R T S
E x p e r t G u i d e s t o L i b r a r y S y s t e m s a n d S e r v i c e s
alatechsource.org
Open Source Library Systems: The Current State of the Art
Marshall Breeding
Library Technology R E P O R T S
Abstract
This issue of Library Technology Reports aims to out- line the major open source integrated library systems and library services platforms and their influence on the broader library technology industry. Chapter 1 provides an overview of open source resource man- agement solutions and introduces the current land- scape of these products in the industry. The chapters following closely examine the open source resource management systems Koha, Evergreen, TIND, and FOLIO. The report concludes by exploring the impact of open source products on the library automation environment.
Library Technology Reports (ISSN 0024-2586) is published eight times a year (January, March, April, June, July, September, October, and Decem- ber) by American Library Association, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. It is managed by ALA TechSource, a unit of the publishing department of ALA. Periodical postage paid at Chicago, Illinois, and at additional mail- ing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Library Technology Reports, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611.
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Copyright © 2017 Marshall Breeding
All Rights Reserved.
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Volume 53, Number 6
Open Source Library Systems: The Current State of the Art
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About the Author
Marshall Breeding is an independent consultant, speaker, and author. He is the editor of Smart Libraries Newsletter and creator and editor of Library Technology Guides (https://librarytechnology.org). He has authored the annual “Library Systems Report” published most recently in American Libraries. He has also edited and authored several books, including Library Technology Buying Strategies. Formerly the director for innovative technology and research for the Vanderbilt University Library, he regularly teaches workshops and presents internationally at library conferences.
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Chapter 1—Introduction 5 Open Source Software Issues 6 Open Source Resource Management Systems 7 Note 8
Chapter 2—Koha: The Original Open Source ILS 9 Koha: A New Zealand Gift to Libraries 9 LibLime: First US Koha Services Company 10 PTFS Enters the Koha Support Arena 11 The ByWater Solutions Era 11 Implementations 11 Technical Characteristics 13 Functionality 14 Satisfaction and Suitability 15 Forecast 16 Koha Resources 17 Notes 17 Chapter References 17
Chapter 3—Evergreen 18 Evergreen’s Birth in Georgia 18 Equinox Software, Inc., Formed 19 Equinox Open Library Initiative 19 Shifting Support Trends 20 LYRASIS Offers Open Source Support 20 Governance 20 Functionality 20 Satisfaction and Suitability 21 Technical Characteristics 23 Forecast 23 Evergreen Resources 23 Notes 24 Chapter References 24
Chapter 4—Kuali OLE (Defunct) 25 General Background 25 Chapter Resources 25
Chapter 5—FOLIO: A New Open Source Initiative 27 Stakeholders and Community 27 The Role of EBSCO Information Services 27 The Open Library Environment 28 The Open Library Foundation 28 Index Data 28 Functional Vision 28 Technical Vision 29 Time Line and Current Status 29
Contents
Forecast 30 Notes 30 Chapter Resources 30
Chapter 6—Invenio, or the TIND ILS 32 General Background 32 TIND: An Official CERN Spin-Off 32 Technical Characteristics 33 Invenio Development Community 33 Forecast 33 Chapter Resources 33
Chapter 7—The Impact of Open Source Library Resource Management Systems 34
References and Resources 34
Contents, continued
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Open Source Library Systems: The Current State of the Art Marshall Breeding
T his issue of Library Technology Reports takes a look at the open source alternatives available to libraries for their strategic systems. Libraries
depend on their core technology systems for manag- ing and providing access to their collection resources and other aspects of their operations. These core sys- tems include integrated library systems (ILSs), the longstanding model of library automation originally designed for managing print collections, and the newer genre of library services platforms that has gained favor with academic and research libraries.
These strategic systems have been sold to librar- ies primarily as proprietary products controlled by a single vendor. Under this proprietary model, librar- ies that use these products remain dependent on that vendor for the ongoing development of the software, for addressing any problems with the system, and for support or other types of services. Proprietary soft- ware will likely have many different configuration options but may have limitations in the ways that it can be customized to address library-specific issues. The costs with proprietary software may also strain library budgets.
Despite these limitations, proprietary software continues as the dominant approach for strategic library systems, and most libraries express relatively high degrees of satisfaction with their systems and their associated vendors.1
Open source products have been created that present alternatives to the proprietary systems. These open source products include some that are well established and widely deployed and some that have more recently emerged, as well as ones still in devel- opment. These products add an important dynamic to technology products generally dominated by pro- prietary software. Both open source and proprietary
software comes with advantages and disadvantages, which we will explore in the report.
This report aims to provide a current look at the major ILSs and library services platforms and the impact they have made on the broader library tech- nology industry. The intended audience includes those responsible for shaping the technology strategies or involved in evaluating and selecting systems. The dis- cussion is not intended as highly technical and should be accessible to administrators as well as those more directly involved in systems. Persons involved in the development of open source systems will hopefully benefit from the background and perspective pro- vided, but will likely not learn new technical details.
Only a small number of products fall within of the scope of this report. Products discussed include Koha, the original open source ILS, which has come to be one of the most widely deployed library auto- mation products in the world; Evergreen, an open source ILS created primarily for consortia of public libraries; Invenio, an open source platform created by CERN that has recently been made available through its spin-off company TIND; and FOLIO, a new open source initiative to create an open source library ser- vices platform.
Other types of open source software have not been addressed in this report. Product categories such as discovery interfaces, content repositories, and a bevy of specialized tools and utilities also have open source options, which deserve their own detailed treatment and are not described here in detail.
This report takes open source software as an objective alternative to proprietary products. In other words, the technology products discussed are not con- sidered more or less desirable based on whether they are open source or proprietary, but on the merits of
Introduction
Chapter 1
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their functionality, how well they have served the needs of libraries that use them, and other tangible factors.
The report also does not aim to provide side-by- side comparisons of features and technical character- istics among the various products discussed or with the proprietary options. Some discussion of the gen- eral approach of each product is provided to give a general impression of its capabilities and suitability to libraries of different types. Those interested in more in-depth information can consult with the documen- tation provided for each of the products discussed on their respective websites.
The story of open source in the library technol- ogy scene continues to unfold. In some chapters, the scene has been set already. ILSs based on open source software have seen continuous rise in popularity since about 2000 and can now be seen as well within the mainstream. New chapters in the saga are being writ- ten even today, with new characters and unexpected turns in plot. The launch of the FOLIO initiative to create a new open source library services platform represents a major twist. In a corner of the industry where Ex Libris has established a solid foothold and seems positioned to extend its dominance even fur- ther, a new project launched by its archrival EBSCO has taken aim to disrupt its course. Will this new open source upstart alter the landscape in the long term? The answer lies in the next chapter yet to be written.
Open Source Software Issues
Open source software is not a new aspect to the library technology environment. Its principles are well understood, as well as the relative advantages and disadvantages of its development models and sup- port arrangements. There is a large body of literature and documentation delineating the issues and details of open source versus proprietary software licenses. This section discusses some of the issues relative to the processes typically involved in open source soft- ware development and the ecosystem of services sur- rounding its implementation and support that have been seen in the open source ILS arena.
The tasks associated with the development of soft- ware remain much the same regardless of whether the product will be commercially licensed or released as open source. The manner in which those tasks take place or are managed, however, may differ substan- tially. Open source software tends to be much more oriented to collaboration among a distributed group of developers, often working for different organiza- tions and in different geographic regions. This distrib- uted method fosters a more transparent process since the development takes place more publicly and less behind the firewall of a single development firm.
Proprietary software development can often be conducted with a certain level of efficiency through more direct management of resources and processes. A company creating proprietary software exerts com- plete control over the software development process. It employs technical architects, software engineers, programmers, quality assurance experts, product managers, domain experts, or other roles needed. Through employment contracts and internal oversight processes, a company can hire an appropriately sized development team and manage the quality and pro- ductivity of each step of the process. Companies often make use of outsourced services to reduce personnel costs. It is also possible for such a corporate develop- ment shop to produce open source software.
Open source projects generally follow a more col- laborative and democratic approach. The open source projects related to library systems exemplify the pro- cesses of community development. A diverse group of companies involved in providing services and librar- ies that make use of the software collaborate out of mutual interest to create and improve the product. This spirit of collaboration and the general philosophy of open source software results in a much more public process. It also demands robust communications pro- cesses and tools for collaborative development. Most open source software development projects will make use of several types of collaborative tools, including the following:
• A public repository for storing source code, docu- mentation, and other project resources. Ideally, these repositories will include advanced version control features. Many projects use GitHub.
• An e-mail distribution list. Most projects have one or more Listservs to distribute news and other types of communications appropriate for e-mail.
• Real-time messaging. It is common for open source projects to have an IRC or Slack channel for conversations among developers and other project participants.
• A website. The project website will provide gen- eral information, including links to all pertinent resources.
GitHub https://github.com
Contrary to the stereotype where open source software is created by volunteers in their spare time, most projects are carried out by professional program- mers employed by companies with a direct or indirect financial interest in the product. Open source library system projects will often include a mix of develop- ers from commercial support firms and individuals
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working in libraries that use the software. An open source software development project will rely on a variety of technical and nontechnical roles. These projects greatly benefit from persons who work in libraries lending their expertise in functional areas in overall product design, workflow optimization, speci- fications for feature requirements, testing, and doc- umentation. Some libraries may also have program- mers who work directly with the source code for the product.
The realm of technology increasingly is based more on revenues derived for services than from direct sales of software licenses. Categories of service fees include the following:
• custom software development • implementation • hosting • help desk and support
The use of any software product involves costs, regardless of whether it is open source or proprietary. Open source software does not involve license fees but will require other types of investments or expen- ditures (see table 1.1). In some cases, an organiza- tion can be entirely self-sufficient and may be able to operate a product based on open source software on existing hardware and through the efforts of its own personnel. Such a situation is relatively rare. In most cases, especially in the realm of enterprise-class business software, organizations will contract with specialized firms for the services needed to operate the software with the levels of reliability and perfor- mance expected for critical business functions.
Open Source Resource Management Systems
The following chapters provide information on some of the major products used in libraries available as open source software. These products fall within the category of what can be termed resource management
systems, which serve as the primary business process automation environment to support the core activi- ties in a library. ILSs and library services platforms are two different types of resource management sys- tems. ILSs are well established as automation systems that were originally created when library collections were primarily composed of print and other physical media. Although ILSs have evolved substantially, they continue to retain an orientation to physical materi- als. Examples of ILSs include the following:
• Symphony, a proprietary product from SirsiDynix • Horizon, a proprietary product from SirsiDynix • Millennium, a proprietary product from Innova-
tive Interfaces • Polaris, a proprietary product from Innovative
Interfaces • Library·Solution, a proprietary product from the
Library Corporation • Carl·X, a proprietary product from the Library
Corporation • Apollo, a proprietary product from Biblionix • Voyager, a proprietary product from Ex Libris (A
ProQuest Company) • Koha, an open source product • Evergreen, an open source product
Library services platforms embody a different over- all model of resource management, addressing work- flows for complex, multiformat collections, including electronic, digital, and print materials. These prod- ucts are deployed on multitenant platforms, have web- based interfaces for all staff and public functions, and include built-in knowledge bases. Examples of library services platforms include the following:
• WorldShare Management Services from OCLC • Alma from Ex Libris (A ProQuest Company) • FOLIO, a new product still under development as
an open source initiative
The dividing lines between ILSs and library ser- vices platforms are not precise. There are some
Table 1.1. Common open source infrastructure components. Source: Marshall Breeding, “Open Source Integrated Library Systems,” Library Technology Reports 44, no. 8 (November–December 2008): 7.
Category Open Source Proprietary Source code Must be made available. Usually held privately by developers.
Intellectual property Subject to copyright. Subject to copyright and commercial li- censes.
License options Must include terms consistent with open source principles.
Commercial license will specify conditions of use, fees, and responsibility of provider.
Software development Collaborative community. Directly managed development team.
Source code management Stored in a public repository such as GitHub.
Stored in private repository.
Support Internal, community, or commercially pro- vided.
Commercially provided.
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products with hybrid characteristics, including the following:
• SirsiDynix BLUEcloud, a multitenant platform providing web-based interfaces and extended functionality for libraries using Symphony or Horizon.
• Sierra, a product evolved from Innovative’s Mil- lennium product that includes some of the func- tional and technology characteristics of a library services platform though retaining much of the character of an ILS.
The next sections take a closer look at the open source resource management systems Koha, Ever- green, TIND, and FOLIO.
Note 1. Marshall Breeding, “Perceptions 2016: An Interna-
tional Survey of Library Automation,” Library Tech- nology Guides, January 25, 2017, https://library technology.org/perceptions/2016.
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K oha currently holds the position as the most widely implemented open source integrated library system (ILS) in the world and one of the
top ILS products of any type globally. This product was initially created to serve a small group of librar- ies in New Zealand. Since they released it as open source software, other libraries began to implement and improve it. Today Koha embodies a feature set comparable with almost any commercial competitor, has a technical architecture able to meet the demands of at least mid-sized libraries, and finds use in ever larger libraries and consortia. The history of Koha has been one of continuous development, marked by mul- tiple episodes of involvement by commercial organi- zations. Today Koha finds use in almost all regions of the globe. While covering some of this interna- tional perspective, this section focuses primarily on the impact of Koha for libraries in the United States.
Koha: A New Zealand Gift to Libraries
Koha was one of the first ILSs developed as open source software. While there were some earlier proj- ects that never gained traction, Koha has been contin- uously developed by a growing community of devel- opers across the globe. It currently ranks among the most widely implemented ILSs in the world, finding use in all types of libraries.
The initial version of the software was created in 1999 by a small software development firm called Katipo Communications for a group of three librar- ies located in the southern part of the north island of New Zealand near Levin. These libraries, serving a population of about 30,000, are now managed by the
Horowhenua District Council, but from 1997 through 2016, they were operated through a nonprofit orga- nization called the Horowhenua Library Trust. Rosa- lie Blake was the Head of Libraries for Horowhenua Library Trust at that time.
Joann Ransom was also associated with the Horowhenua Library Trust at that time and has since been a very active advocate of Koha and open source software in libraries. Ransom retired from the orga- nization in June 2016, when the libraries reverted to direct operation by the Horowhenua District Council.
In the late 1990s the Horowhenua libraries faced the need to implement a new automation system. They were using an ILS called CataList developed by Contec Group International. With the year 2000 approaching, there was concern that at least some components in the aging computer and network infrastructure would fall prey to the infamous Y2K date problem. Their review of the commercial options failed to identify a suitable alternative. Rather than purchase another proprietary product from the same vendor or other supplier, the libraries opted to commission the devel- opment of a new system tailored to their needs.
The Horowhenua Library Trust engaged Katipo Communications, a small firm offering a variety of information technology and development services, to develop a new system according to its specifica- tions. Rachel Hamilton-Williams founded and headed Katipo, and the firm gained international recognition for its work with Koha.
When Koha was initially developed, the concept of open source software was relatively new to the library community. The bold move was made to release the software as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL) rather than having the libraries or Katipo retain direct ownership. By releasing the software,
Koha The Original Open Source ILS
Chapter 2
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Katipo anticipated gaining future business for custom- ized development, and HLT hoped for improvements to the system as it found use in other libraries. Both expectations were realized many times over.
The new system was named Koha, which means “gift” in the Maori language. The word is often used to designate a donation that is offered for an event or cause.
Katipo Communications employed Chris Cor- mack as lead developer for the project. Cormack has remained involved with Koha almost continuously ever since. Most recently he has been affiliated with Catalyst IT, a software and services firm based in Wellington.
The success of Koha at the Horowhenua libraries did not go unnoticed, and the system was soon imple- mented by other libraries in other parts of the world. Although its spread was gradual in the first few years, other libraries saw it as an alternative to the proprie- tary systems. Many of these libraries contributed to the enhancement of Koha to make it a more robust ILS with a more complete range of features. Koha also evolved in ways to strengthen its scalability and performance.
In 2002, the Nelsonville Public Library, with seven branches serving Athens County in Ohio, became one of the first libraries in the United States to formally commit to implementing Koha. Stephen Hedges, direc- tor of the library, was interested in adopting Koha even though it lacked some essential capabilities. Rather than spend its funds on purchasing a proprietary, Nel- sonville Public Library invested $10,000 in develop- ment services to enable Koha to meet it requirements.
Several enhancements were essential for the soft- ware to be successful in a mid-sized public library in the United States. The initial version of Koha used a simple metadata structure. For Koha to be consid- ered a viable system for a broader base of libraries, it was essential for Koha to support the MARC family of standards for bibliographic records to enable it to exchange records with other libraries. The Nelsonville Public Library also required support for the Z39.50 protocol, the international standard for the search and transport of MARC records. Once these features had been completed, Koha was implemented in the Nelsonville Public Library in August 2003. These enhancements further strengthened the position of Koha, and its use expanded in both the United States and other geographic regions.
LibLime: First US Koha Services Company
Koha entered a new phase with the involvement of a new commercial business oriented to its develop- ment and support. A new company named LibLime was founded in March 2005 led by Joshua Ferraro,
who was formerly a systems administrator for the Nel- sonville Public Library. This company became heav- ily involved in further expanding the capabilities of Koha, though its role with the broader Koha commu- nity eventually became strained.
One of the important enhancements to Koha at this time was the incorporation of a new search mod- ule able to perform quickly for libraries with large collections. Although MySQL can support large-scale applications, it has limitations in its capabilities for full-text search, especially for complex structures like the MARC bibliographic records. It is common for applications to make use of a separate utility for indexing, search, and retrieval. Following a techni- cal review that also considered alternatives such as Apache Solr, LibLime selected the Zebra search-and- retrieval module created by Index Data, a software development firm specializing in library-oriented applications. Zebra provides high-performance capa- bilities for the indexing and retrieval of MARC biblio- graphic records. Koha has continued to include Zebra in its current versions.1
Although Zebra was a leading alternative then, other open source indexing technologies have since been created for large-scale implementations, such as Apache Solr and Elasticsearch. Work has been underway to enhance Koha with Elasticsearch as an optional indexing component instead of Zebra.
LibLime attracted many libraries to Koha along with its support services. Some of its early imple- mentations included the Crawford County Federated Library System, Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library, the Central Kansas Library System, the Northeast Kansas Library System, and many other libraries.
In 2008, the Westchester Academic Library Direc- tors Organization selected Koha to replace the Voy- ager ILS that supported its fifteen academic library members. This selection involved a partnership with LibLime to support a major development initiative to enhance Koha with the key features needed for aca- demic libraries. This project resulted in the creation of LibLime Academic Koha, a fork of the software that caused sharp controversies with the broader Koha development community.2
From the period following its founding in 2005 through about 2009, LibLime was the dominant pro- vider of Koha services to libraries in the United States. The company amassed a large customer base of cli- ents and led an ambitious development agenda for the software.
In February 2007, LibLime acquired the Koha- related assets of Katipo Communications.3 The acqui- sition included copyrights, the koha.org domain, and documentation and responsibility for active service contracts. Katipo employees involved with Koha tran- sitioned to LibLime. Following this business arrange- ment, Katipo was precluded from future work with
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Koha but remained active in its many other projects and services.4
In September 2009, LibLime announced LibLime Enterprise Koha as its hosted service and new develop- ment initiative for Koha. LibLime positioned this offer- ing as a hosted ILS that it would develop aggressively and independently. LibLime Enterprise Koha would also include optional modules outside the Koha code- base. The Biblios.net cataloging utility and the GetIt acquisitions tool were developed to function with any ILS and were not released as open source software.
The launch of its essentially privately developed forks of Koha sparked considerable animosity between LibLime and the global development community. Although LibLime promised to release the code corre- sponding to the enhancements it created, the spirit of cooperation had fallen away. This rift also impacted the company’s reputation for some libraries that per- ceived its strategies as not aligned with the values of open source software. Although most of its custom- ers remained loyal, the company’s position was weak- ened, leaving an opening for new competitors provid- ing services surrounding Koha as developed by the global community.
PTFS Enters the Koha Support Arena
Another US-based company, PTFS (Progressive Tech- nology Federal Systems), entered the Koha support services realm in 2008. It initially worked to imple- ment Koha within its niche of libraries associated with US federal government agencies, but it also expanded to the realm of public and academic libraries. PTFS had previously created a digital archiving platform called ArchivalWare, which had been adopted by many government agencies.
From the time of its initial involvement with Koha, PTFS encountered a tense relationship with Lib- Lime and others in the global development commu- nity. The company continues to provide support ser- vices for Koha, mostly under the banner LibLime, a PTFS Company. It has retained many of the customers it acquired from LibLime, though some have shifted to other support providers or have implemented pro- prietary ILSs. PTFS has continued development of library automation software increasingly separate from Koha. The company introduced BiblioVation as a new ILS that can be integrated with its other offerings to form a comprehensive platform for managing print and digital resources. It has implemented a discovery layer with a different interface and codebase than the online catalog module of Koha.
Koha.org, the primary domain associated with Koha, became a key source of contention. This domain held the documentation for Koha and many other essential resources. Its ownership by LibLime,
and then by PTFS—organizations not closely aligned with the global Koha development community—was increasingly problematic. The global community had hoped that the domain would be transferred to a neu- tral party, but PTFS retained ownership. In response, a new domain, koha-community.org, was launched and continues to serve as the primary domain for all content and activities associated with Koha and its global development community.
With its position weakening for new clients and the company in internal disarray, LibLime offered itself for sale, and it was acquired by PTFS in January 2010. Many key personnel had departed the company, with only eleven remaining out of the twenty-eight employees in place at the end of 2008. The acquisition included the LibLime brand and domain, the koha.org domain LibLime acquired from Katipo, copyrights, the US trademark for Koha, and documentation related to Koha, as well as responsibility for active service con- tracts. LibLime CEO Joshua Ferraro departed from the company. At the time of the sale, LibLime had 108 support agreements spanning 160 organizations, rep- resenting a total of 500 individual library facilities.
The ByWater Solutions Era
ByWater Solutions was launched in 2009 as a startup to provide support services for Koha. The company was founded by Brendan Gallagher and Nathan Curulla. The company aligned itself with the global Koha development support community and entered into partnerships with like-minded companies such as BibLibre, a Koha support company for libraries in France. This positive relationship with the global com- munity and its adherence to the spirit of open source were well received. ByWater Solutions has attracted a steadily increasing number of libraries signing agree- ments for its support services. Today ByWater Solu- tions stands as the dominant provider for Koha sup- port services in the United States.
Implementations
Koha has been implemented in tens of thousands of libraries across the world. The libraries.org directory includes 4,705 libraries using some form of Koha. Since Koha is open source software, it is difficult to track all its implementations. It is used in many coun- tries that are not well represented in libraries.org. The total number of implementations may exceed 10,000.
Open source software does not imply an absence of commercial involvement. Quite the contrary, open source software projects often encourage for-profit companies as well as nonprofit organizations to become involved with their communities. In contrast
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to the proprietary software realm in which business activity turns to a large extent on license fees, open source projects provide many opportunities for com- panies to provide services for which they can charge fees. Dozens of companies have become involved with Koha. Some companies are dedicated solely to pro- viding services for Koha, some provide services for a variety of open source library-oriented products, and others may be involved with both open source and proprietary technologies. The organizations pro- viding Koha services often compete with each other to provide services to libraries while still cooperat- ing within the broader Koha development community. Most Koha service providers operate within a specific country or geographic area; others may specialize in specific types of libraries, such as those associated with governmental or military organizations.
Service providers can make open source software available to a wider range of libraries. It is a miscon- ception that libraries need to have in-house techni- cal expertise to use open source software. Libraries with technical expertise can implement open source software self sufficiently. Using open source software independently in this way involves allocation of inter- nal resources, such as the efforts of technical and nontechnical personnel, computing resources, train- ing, testing, documentation, and related tasks. Engag- ing a service provider can relieve the library of all, or at least most, of these tasks. In most cases, using an open source product with a comprehensive set of host- ing and support services from an external provider will require no more internal technical expertise than would be needed for a proprietary system.
Patterns vary by country and region regarding the support arrangements for open source ILS products. In the United States, most parts of Europe, and the United Kingdom, the vast majority of libraries imple- menting Koha rely on commercially provided support services. In the developing world, libraries often lack financial resources to support either licenses to pro- prietary products or support fees but are able to cul- tivate the technical expertise to independently imple- ment open source software. Libraries in these regions may also cooperate to create local customizations that can be shared and reduce the technical burden for individual organizations.
Koha in the United States
Table 2.1 presents the numbers of libraries using Koha in the United States as recorded in the libraries.org database of libraries in Library Technology Guides. These numbers should not be taken as definitive. There may be some libraries using Koha missing from the reg- istry, especially among special libraries that may not have a public website for their library or information center. The table shows a small difference between the
combined totals for each of the major support options and the total counts in libraries.org, which represent those working with other support providers.
Libraries.org can also be used to illustrate shifts in support options. There are 177 libraries spanning 258 facilities that have moved support contracts from Lib- Lime to ByWater Solutions.5
In the United States, ByWater Solutions provides support for the largest number of Koha implementa- tions. Although not absolutely comprehensive, the libraries.org directory in Library Technology Guides shows 694 libraries including 1,041 facilities using Koha with support from ByWater Solutions.6 ByWater Solutions also has some clients in Canada (8 libraries, 25 sites) and other countries. The majority of these are public libraries (432 or 62 percent), followed by academics (100 or 14 percent). Figure 2.1 illustrates the types of libraries using Koha with support from ByWater Solutions.7
Koha has also been implemented by libraries with varying sizes of collections (figure 2.2). Using the librar- ies engaging the services of ByWater Solutions as an example, most libraries using Koha are medium-sized, with 52.3 percent having collections between 20,000 and 200,000 volumes; 42.1 percent having collections less than 20,000; and 5.6% percent having collections with more than 200,000 volumes. It is also important to note that many of the small libraries using Koha do so as part of a system shared among the members of a consortium. The Northeast Kansas Library System operates a Koha implementation shared by fifty-three members; forty-two libraries participate in the Central Kansas Library System implementation of Koha; and thirty-three libraries participate in the Texas Library Consortium Catalog. Table 2.2 shows how Koha has evolved since 2002 and looks at how many contracts Koha has in place, how many libraries they’re work- ing with, and how many institutions have implemented Koha each year since 2002.
United Kingdom
A company called PTFS Europe has become estab- lished as the leading support provider to librar- ies in the United Kingdom. PTFS Europe operates
Table 2.1. Number of libraries using Koha in the US
Support Option Libraries Facilities
ByWater Solutions 667 1,041
PTFS/LibLime 223 515
Independent 80 128
Equinox 16 18
Combined 986 1,702
Total in libraries.org 997 1,714
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independently from PTFS and is a distributor of its ArchivalWare product in the region. PTFS Europe works with the Koha community and not with Lib- Lime Koha, though it does provide support for Biblio- Vation. Currently 87 libraries (212 branches) rely on PTFS Europe for Koha support services. PTFS Europe has also developed an academic course list manage- ment system called rebus:list. In addition, the com- pany provides services for the open source Evergreen ILS for consortia (see chapter 3).
Technical Characteristics
Koha was developed in the Perl programming lan- guage, and the many scripts that comprise the
application were released as open source. It relies on MySQL, an open source relational database manage- ment system, and the Apache web server and ran on Linux servers. These components, often called the LAMP stack, were a very popular suite of technologies for open source devel- opment at that time. Since that time, other environments have been on the rise for web-based applications, nota- bly PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Python. Enterprise-level applications are likely to be written in Java. Perl, however, continues to be a highly regarded pro- gramming language and is expected to remain viable indefinitely.
Perl, known for its elegant abil- ity to process strings and manipu- late data, was adopted widely in web development projects. Perl scripts are interpreted in real time rather than being compiled into executable pro- grams. Interpreted languages tend to have more overhead than compiled lan- guages such as C. In its standard imple- mentation, each task invoking a Perl script also loads a separate instance of the Perl interpreter, adding additional overhead. One of the challenges for Koha as it has evolved for use in librar- ies with larger collections and heavier transaction loads involves optimizing the performance of Perl.
The performance issues related to using Perl can be addressed through the Plack, a technical interface designed to decrease overhead and increase perfor- mance. When operating through Plack, the application operates through a sin- gle instance of Perl and related mod-
ules instead of creating child processes for each script invoked. The use of Plack requires that Perl programs be tested and modified as needed for compatibility. Plack has been supported as a configuration option since about version 3.22. PTFS/LibLime has also implemented Plack for its Koha-based products.
Plack http://plackperl.org
Work has also been accomplished to improve the search performance and scalability of Perl though the use of Elasticsearch. This search technology devel- oped by Elastic has become one of the key components
Figure 2.1 Breakdown of libraries by type using Koha with support from ByWater Solutions
Figure 2.2 Distribution of Koha ByWater Solutions implementations by size
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for large-scale websites and applications that rely on a search interface with relevancy and faceted navi- gation. Elasticsearch is an alternative to Apache Solr, which has been a more long-standing search compo- nent for web-based applications. Most of the technical work to implement Elasticsearch for Koha has been completed, though it is not yet a production-ready option. Some libraries, especially those supported by BibLibre, are already using Elasticsearch in their pro- duction implementations of Koha.
Elasticsearch https://www.elastic.co
The software can be installed on any of several versions of Linux, though Debian is most frequently used. While Debian may represent the most com- monly used environment for Koha, institutions with experience with other operating systems in the Linux family should be able to successfully install Koha and its associated components.
Koha is not designed to work under Microsoft Windows, even though there are versions of each of the constituent components available. Executables for Perl (notably ActivePerl), MySQL, and Apache Web are all available for Microsoft Windows, but the many related modules and other dependencies have not been developed or tested.
Koha was designed to rely on the MySQL relational database, an open source tool that has been widely implemented in web-based applications. Sun Micro- systems acquired MySQL in 2008; ownership passed to Oracle through its January 2010 acquisition of Sun. MySQL continues as open source software, with sup- port and enterprise-level high-performance versions
available as commercial options. Other databases, such as MariaDB, have emerged as MySQL work-alikes and have fewer commercial entanglements. MariaDB can be used with Koha instead of MySQL, though some bugs have been identified and resolved. Koha does not function with PostgreSQL or other open source or com- mercial databases not compatible with MySQL.
Koha has been implemented in a variety of host- ing arrangements. Libraries implementing Koha by themselves may opt to use either local server hard- ware or on instances of Linux in Amazon Web Ser- vices or other infrastructure-as-a-service provid- ers. Support vendors can provide services to install and maintain Koha on servers housed in the library, though the most common arrangement involves host- ing services deployed on the provider’s servers or through public or private cloud infrastructure that the provider provisions and manages for its libraries. Consistent with that of proprietary ILSs, very few new implementations are deployed on local infrastructure but are instead based on some type of vendor hosting arrangement.
Koha is an entirely web-based application, includ- ing both patron and staff interfaces. Libraries do not need to install any additional software on desktop or laptop computers nor are any browser plugins needed. Koha was one of the earliest ILSs to rely entirely on web-based interfaces.
Functionality
Koha falls within the general category of software called ILSs in the United States and most parts of the world or library management systems in the United Kingdom. As such, it includes a suite of modules addressing standard areas of functionality, including
Table 2.2. Statistics for Koha 2002–2016
Year LibLime PTFS ByWater
Contracts Libraries Install Contracts Libraries Install Contracts Libraries Install
2016 70 91 949
2015 40 76 919
2014 53 94 879
2013 68 150 785
2012 34 40 554
2011 545 231 446
2010 44 63 147 40 155 167
2009 12 150 7 77 78
2008
2007 29 61 340
2006 17 26 311
2005
2004
2003
2002
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cataloging, circulation, acquisitions, serials control, and an online catalog. Consistent with other ILS prod- ucts, it excels at the management of physical library collections, such as print materials and media collec- tions. Koha does not fit within the genre of library services platforms, which are designed to manage complex collections of electronic resources as well as physical collections.
This section does not attempt to provide a compre- hensive checklist or report of the functionality avail- able in Koha. Rather, it gives a general description of Koha’s capabilities. Libraries interested in implement- ing Koha will need to thoroughly review the docu- mentation or contact one of the support organizations.
• Circulation. Koha performs all basic tasks asso- ciated with the lending and return of materi- als in the library’s collection. Libraries can cre- ate sets of loan rules that determine circulation and renewal intervals based on branch location, patron and item types, and other factors. The sys- tem supports the concept of floating collections, where items can remain at the branch in which they are returned rather than being automatically routed to their home location. Koha can support both stand-alone libraries and multibranch sys- tems or consortia.
• Course reserves. Koha includes a module to sup- port short-term loans for academic courses.
• Patron record management. Libraries can define multiple patron categories, each of which can have distinct options for notices and privacy. Koha supports several privacy options for patron circulation data, including anonymization once an item is returned, permanent retention of iden- tifiable circulation data, or anonymization per- formed at periodic intervals.
• Cataloging. Koha includes support for the description of library materials using the MARC bibliographic formats and supporting AACR2 and RDA cataloging rules. Installations of Koha can support both UNIMARC and MARC21 record encodings. Authority control is available for per- sonal names, corporate names, meeting names, uniform titles, geographic names, chronological terms, and genre or form terms. Koha includes the ability to search and retrieve MARC records from external bibliographic sources using its built-in Z39.50 client. Koha also includes a Z39.50 server to provide search and record retrieval for external applications.
• Serials. Koha includes features for the manage- ment of print serials subscriptions, including the ability to create predictive checkin patterns, route received issues, issue claims for expected issues not received, and initiate or renew subscriptions.
• Acquisitions. Koha includes an acquisitions
module to manage requests or suggestions, plac- ing and receiving items ordered, managing ven- dor details, paying invoices, tracking funds and budgets, and claiming materials not received. The system supports EDI for placing orders with ven- dors electronically and for paying invoices.
• Online catalog. Koha provides a web-based online catalog with basic and advanced search options. Record displays can include cover art linked from a variety of sources or subscription services. The search interface includes facets pre- sented on the left side for users to narrow search results, according to availability status, author, library or branch location, item type, subject, series, or other library-defined categories. Results can be sorted according to relevancy, date pub- lished, author, title, or call number. Libraries implementing Koha can configure its catalog to display their own logos, branding, or other stan- dard header features.
• Discovery index. The online catalog can be inte- grated with EBSCO Discovery Service to present article-level results from the library’s selections of electronic resources interleaved or alongside the materials managed directly within Koha. EBSCO Information Services has provided grants to the Koha community for this functionality and other enhancements of general interest.
• E-book integration. Libraries with e-book lend- ing services can integrate the Koha online catalog to present these items along with print materials in search requests, with links to view availabil- ity, to download or view, or to add to the hold queue if not available. These e-book integration features are available for OverDrive, bibliotheca CloudLibrary, and many other digital lending services.
• Self service. Koha supports the ability to work with self-service lending and return kiosks using the SIP2 protocol.
• Resource sharing. Koha can participate in resource-sharing systems using standard proto- cols such as Z39.50, SRU, NCIP, or SIP2.
• Language support. As software used in many different counties, Koha has had strong support dating from its early version to provide transla- tions for its staff and patron interfaces into many different languages.
Satisfaction and Suitability
In the current phase of library technology, open source and proprietary products compete directly on the merits of their functionality, the quality of the support provided, and financial value. Some librar- ies are drawn to qualities of open source such as the
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independence from any specific vendor, its orientation toward community devel- opment, and its ability to be customized for local needs. Other libraries choose proprietary products where the vendor takes full responsibility for their ongo- ing development and support.
Koha has a well-established track record of successful use in libraries spanning over fifteen years. The annual Library Automation Perceptions Sur- vey has been conducted since 2007 to attempt to measure the levels of satis- faction libraries have with their ILSs. Libraries using Koha have given gener- ally positive rankings, though not dra- matically different from those given for proprietary products. Figure 2.3 and 2.4 show the satisfaction scores given for Koha regardless of support arrangement and for those libraries using Koha with support from ByWater Solutions. As a point of comparison, figure 2.5 shows the satisfaction scores given by librar- ies using Library.Solution, a proprietary ILS from the Library Corporation.
Libraries have migrated to Koha from many different incumbent ILSs. It has displaced some of the major products, including SirsiDynix Symphony, Sirsi- Dynix Horizon, Millennium from Inno- vative Interfaces, Library·Solution from the Library Corporation, Voyager from Ex Libris, and others. The Migration tool on Library Technology Guides provides a detailed report of the products used by libraries prior to migrating to Koha.8
Some libraries that have imple- mented Koha have later migrated to other products. At least thirty-one libraries have migrated from Koha to SirsiDynix Sym- phony; seventeen from Koha to Innovative’s Sierra; forty-three to Apollo from Biblionix (all small to mid- sized public libraries); and ten to OCLC WorldShare Management Services. These numbers do not indicate a major trend away from Koha, but reflect the reality that systems that work well in some libraries prove not to be ideal for others.
There has also been a considerable amount of libraries changing support vendors for their Koha implementations. For example, 180 libraries (268 branches) have shifted from support from LibLime to ByWater Solutions. It is also not uncommon for librar- ies to contract with a support vendor for their initial implementation and to eventually shift to managing their implementation independently without a service provider.
Forecast
Koha has become well established as an open source ILS that has gained considerable functional and technical maturity since its initial version created in 2000. The number of libraries adopting Koha has increased continually. In the developing world, Koha has become the leading ILS product for libraries of all types, including many national initiatives. Going forward, it is reasonable to expect Koha to gain even more ground in the developing world where propri- etary products exceed the financial resources avail- able. Apart from financial considerations, Koha’s func- tionality meets the basic needs of libraries in many regions and has excellent facility for language transla- tions. In the United States and Canada, Koha will con- tinue to gain ground as well. In these countries, Koha
Figure 2.3 Satisfaction score by year for Koha. Source: Marshall Breeding, “Perceptions 2016: An International Survey of Library Automation,” Library Technology Guides, January 25, 2017, https://librarytechnology.org/perceptions/2016.
Figure 2.4 Satisfaction score by year for Koha—ByWater Solutions. Source: Marshall Breeding, “Perceptions 2016: An International Survey of Library Automa- tion,” Library Technology Guides, January 25, 2017, https://librarytechnol ogy.org/perceptions/2016.
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can offer a reasonably competitive feature set relative to the proprietary systems, especially for mid-sized public libraries and some academic and school librar- ies. It seems less likely that Koha will find its way into the large academic and research libraries, especially with FOLIO on the horizon for libraries in that cat- egory interested in an open source option. The success of Koha in the United States and other advanced coun- tries is largely driven by commercial service providers able to lower the thresholds of complexity for using an open source product.
Koha Resources
Many resources are available that will be useful to libraries considering or those that have implemented Koha:
• The primary website for Koha: https://koha-com munity.org.
˳ Note that PTFS controls the Koha.org domain and provides access to LibLime Koha, LibLime Enterprise Koha, and the support services it offers.
• Koha documentation: https://koha-community.org /documentation.
• Three mailing lists are maintained: ˳ A general discussion list: https://lists.katipo .co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha.
˳ A more technically oriented list for Koha devel- opers: http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin /mailman/listinfo/koha-devel.
˳ A Koha discussion list for users in the United States operated by ByWater Solutons: http://koha-us.net/index.php/Koha_US_users _group_listserv.
• The Koha development community communicates through a very active IRC channel: http://irc.koha -community.org/koha.
Notes 1. Index Data, “LibLime Partners with Index Data to
Enhance Koha,” news release, December 5, 2005, https://librarytechnology.org/document/11708.
2. Marshall Breeding, “Open Source ILS Gains Ground with Academic Libraries,” Smart Libraries Newsletter 28, no. 2 (February 2008): 1–2, https://journals.ala .org/index.php/sln/issue/viewFile/346/175.
3. LibLime, “LibLime to Acquire Katipo Communica- tions’ Koha Division,” news release, February 22,
2007, https://librarytechnology.org /document/12428.
4. See also Marshall Breeding, “The Business Side of Open Source: LibLime Buys Koha Div,” Smart Librar- ies Newsletter 27, no. 4 (April 2007): 3–4, https:// journals.ala.org/index.php/sln/issue/viewIssue /356/165.
5. Search of Libraries.org database, where the country is United States, the library automation system used is Koha—ByWater Solutions, and the library auto- mation system previously installed was Koha—Lib- Lime, accessed June 10, 2017, https://librarytech nology.org/libraries/search.pl?Country=United%20 States&ILS=Koha%20--%20ByWater%20 Solutions&PreviousILS=Koha%20--%20LibLime.
6. Search of Libraries.org database as of June 2017, where the library automation system used is Koha— ByWater Solutions, https://librarytechnology.org /libraries/search.pl?ILS=Koha%20--%20 ByWater%20Solutions.
7. Marshall Breeding, “Koha—ByWater Solutions Im- plementations by Library Type,” Library Technology Guides, Product Directory, accessed June 10, 2017, https://librarytechnology.org/products/type.pl ?Product=Koha%20--%20ByWater%20Solutions.
8. Marshall Breeding, “Koha—ByWater Solutions Mi- gration Report,” Library Technology Guides, Pro- duction Directory, accessed June 10, 2017, https:// librarytechnology.org/products/migration.pl ?Product=Koha%20--%20ByWater%20 Solutions&HQ=on.
Chapter References
Breeding, Marshall. “EBSCO Provides Major Grant to Open Source Koha ILS Project.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 35, no. 3 (March 2015): 3–5. https:// librarytechnology.org/document/20599.
———. “The Open Source ILS: Still Only a Distant Possibility.” Information Technology and Libraries 21, no. 1 (March 2002): 16–18. https:// librarytechnology.org/document/9681.
Proffitt, Brian. “Koha: A Library Checks Out Open Source.” (Discussion of Koha at the Nelsonville Public Library.) LinuxPlanet, August 30, 2002. http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet /reports/4408/1.
Ransom, Joann, with Chris Cormack and Rosalie Blake. “How Hard Can It Be? Developing in Open Source.” Code4Lib Journal, no. 7 (June 26, 2009), http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/1638.
Willis, Nathan. “Koha Community Squares Off against Commercial Fork.” LWN.net, May 5, 2010. https://lwn.net/Articles/386284.
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T he Evergreen integrated library system (ILS) was developed to support the needs of library consor- tia. This open source product began in 2004 to
serve a large consortium of public libraries in Geor- gia and has since been implemented by many other consortia and individual libraries in the United States. Evergreen has seen limited adoption internationally.
Evergreen’s Birth in Georgia
The state of Georgia has a long-standing record of pro- viding strong support for its libraries through statewide programs. This support can be seen in the Galileo ini- tiative to provide all the members of the University Sys- tem of Georgia with electronic resources and in shared ILSs for its academic and public libraries. In 2000, the University System of Georgia implemented a shared ILS based on Voyager for all of the public universities and colleges. In 2015, Galileo selected Ex Libris Alma to replace Voyager, and it was placed in production in 2017. In a parallel strategy for the public libraries in the state, the Georgia Public Library Service, a unit of the University System of Georgia, launched PINES (Public Information Network for Electronic Services), a large- scale shared automation and resource-sharing project. This initiative was initially based on a proprietary ILS product, which was subsequently replaced by locally developed open source software.
The initial version of the Evergreen ILS was devel- oped to support the PINES consortium of public librar- ies. PINES was conceived as a potentially statewide library service in which any resident in the state was entitled to a card enabling them to borrow materi- als from any participating library. Public libraries throughout the state would be able to make use of
the shared ILS at minimal cost rather than purchase and maintain their own. The program has been enor- mously successful, with only a handful of libraries in the state opting not to join. Currently, PINES serves the small to mid-sized communities and rural areas in Georgia. Libraries serving urban areas have not joined the consortium, notably the Atlanta-Fulton Library, Cobb County Public Library, and Gwinnett County Public Library.
The PINES project was launched in 1999 based on the Unicorn (now Symphony) ILS from Sirsi Corpora- tion (now SirsiDynix). Prior to this time, many of the public libraries were using outdated automation sys- tems that might not have been able to handle the antic- ipated problems with the turn of the new millennium, often called the Y2K bug. The first phase of implemen- tation included 99 libraries, which was expanded by another 100 in September 2001. By 2003, the system was supporting 1.3 million users and 15 million circu- lation transactions. The two phases of the project rep- resented about $1 million of revenue for SirsiDynix.
The high cost of the software and problems with performance and functionality led the administra- tors of PINES to review its technology options. In June 2004, the Georgia state librarian, Lamar Veatch, announced that the Georgia Public Library Service would develop a new ILS to support PINES and even- tually move away from SirsiDynix Unicorn ILS.1 This was a bold move that went contrary to the overwhelm- ing trend away from locally developed software. It was a calculated risk that ultimately resulted in the creation of software that met the needs of PINES and other organizations with similar needs.
Development of the software, which came to be known as Evergreen, began in 2004 following the announcement of the state librarian. The GPLS
Evergreen
Chapter 3
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internal development team included Brad LaJeunesse, Jason Etheridge, Mike Rylander, and Bill Erickson. These developers were tasked to create an ILS that would stand up to the intense load of the statewide PINES consortium and offer functionality suitable for its public library members. (See the Technical Charac- teristics section on page 23 for details.)
At the time when Evergreen development began, the PINES consortium included 252 public libraries in 123 counties throughout the state.2 These libraries had combined collections of over 8 million items and 1.6 million individuals registered to borrow materials. This consortium was one of the largest in the coun- try at the time and thus required robust and scalable technology infrastructure.
Following a development period of 28 months, the software was placed into production for the 252 mem- bers of PINES on September 5, 2006. The transition from Unicorn to the new Evergreen software was suc- cessful. This project had gained wide attention at the time, sparking interest in other libraries and consortia in trying out the software.
Equinox Software, Inc., Formed
With the successful launch of Evergreen for PINES, many other libraries approached GPLS expressing interest in the software. The state agency did not have the resources or interest to provide support for Ever- green outside its own jurisdiction. It was also deemed that it would be a conflict of interest for a state agency to devote resources to libraries outside the state.
These concerns drove a strategy to spin a new company oriented to the ongoing development of Evergreen that could also provide support services to libraries implementing the software. Equinox Soft- ware, Inc., was launched in February 2007 as a pri- vate for-profit company to provide development and support services for Evergreen. The company was founded by many of the members of the development team that created Evergreen within PINES, led by Brad LaJeunesse as president. (LaJeunesse resigned in November 2014 and was succeeded by Mike Rylander.)
The formation of Equinox meant that the origi- nal developers would no longer be on the state pay- roll. Evergreen was released as open source software, meaning that Equinox, or any other organization, could provide related services. The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, the parent insti- tution of the project, retained ownership of intellec- tual property, such as the Evergreen trademark and copyrighted materials.
Equinox Software was able to attract customers for its Evergreen support services. The PINES consor- tium itself wanted to continue the relationship with the individuals who had created Evergreen. By July
2007, a support contract was in place for Equinox to provide services for the Evergreen installation sup- porting PINES.
In addition to PINES, Equinox attracted a steady slate of consortia and individual libraries to contract for its support services. Other early clients of Equinox included King County Library System in Washington, the Kent County Public Library in Maryland (which migrated from Evergreen to Polaris in 2017 as part of the Eastern Shore Regional Library), and the Michi- gan Library Consortium (Grand Rapids Public Library originally participated, but now has an independent installation of Evergreen).
The public libraries in the Canadian province of British Columbia were also early supporters of Evergreen. The Public Library Services Branch, an agency of the British Columbia provincial govern- ment, invested $1 million in the development of Evergreen. This marked the beginning of the British Columbia SITKA Consortium, an opt-in province-wide Evergreen implementation now supporting over 100 library branches, including some in the neighboring province of Manitoba.
Sequoia
Equinox built its business on its expertise and tech- nical capacity to provide services for Evergreen and other library-related open source software. Equinox needed extremely reliable and scalable infrastructure to support its hosting services. The company launched a new hosting platform and value-added service that was branded as Sequoia in January 2014. This new platform enabled Equinox to efficiently deploy the many different installations of Evergreen and Koha it hosted on behalf of its customer libraries. Sequoia, as a multitenant hosting platform, enables Equinox to manage many different instances of applications, including Evergreen, Koha, and FulfILLment, with more reliability and faster performance than would be possible on standard servers and storage configu- rations. Equinox created Sequoia as proprietary soft- ware for data center management, optimized for the open source products it supports. This hosting plat- form strengthens Equinox’s business position. The reliability and performance Equinox can potentially deliver via Sequoia will exceed what other hosting providers may be able to offer or what a consortium or library could reasonably expect to achieve with its in-house resources.3
Equinox Open Library Initiative
Equinox made a major change in January 2017, shift- ing from a for-profit company to a nonprofit organi- zation. At that time, all the personnel and assets of
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Equinox Software, Inc., were transferred to the Equi- nox Open Library Initiative. The new organization is a nonprofit corporation with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt sta- tus. The organization continues with the same lead- ership and personnel structure as before, with Mike Rylander serving as president and Grace Dunbar as vice president.4
At the time of the transition, Equinox employed seventeen personnel. It stands as the dominant, though not exclusive, provider of Evergreen support services. Equinox performs about 80 percent of the develop- ment for Evergreen, with the remainder carried out by the broader Evergreen development community.
Shifting Support Trends
The Georgia Public Library Services shifted to mostly self-sufficient support for PINES in 2012. Although it purchases consulting services as needed, the regular operation of PINES relies primarily on its in-house technology personnel. This scenario represents a major challenge for Equinox, where an organization will take advantage of short-term services for migra- tion and implementation, but in the long term may be able to function without paid service contracts.
Some implementations exhibit the opposite sce- nario. The PaILS/SPARK consortium of public librar- ies in Pennsylvania originally implemented Ever- green in 2011 through a local agency, but ultimately decided that it needed better technical infrastructure and additional expertise. PaILS entered into a hosting and support agreement with Equinox in August 2013.
As an ILS developed for consortia, Evergreen can have implementations subject to multiple layers of sup- port. In most cases, the consortial office will provide at least an initial level of support for issues reported by its member libraries. Any problems the consortial office is not able to resolve would then be escalated to the support provider. Over time, the consortium may gain sufficient expertise with a product such as Ever- green that it no longer needs external services.
A number of consortia that initially contracted with Equinox for Evergreen support have shifted to varying degrees of self sufficiency. Some may move from a comprehensive set of support services to a more project-based arrangement.
LYRASIS Offers Open Source Support
LYRASIS, a nonprofit library services organization, launched a Technology Services program in 2011 to provide services to libraries with open source soft- ware products. The program included hosting and sup- port services for Evergreen as well as the Drupal and DSpace open source repository platforms. Michigan
Evergreen, Maine Balsam Library Consortium, and Evergreen Virginia contracted with LYRASIS for sup- port. LYRASIS withdrew its Technology Services pro- gram in 2015, and those customers shifted to other support options. LYRASIS’s brief venture in open source support reflects the challenges of working in this business environment.
Governance
Although Equinox has been the dominant provider of development and support services for Evergreen, it is only one of the organizations comprising the broader Evergreen community. The Evergreen Project partners with the Software Freedom Conservancy for assistance with governance and administrative func- tions. The Software Freedom Conservancy is a non- profit organization providing advocacy and services for open source projects. It serves as the designated organization for the Evergreen Project to receive funds and hold its intellectual property.
Software Freedom Conservancy https://sfconservancy.org
An Evergreen Oversight Board has been estab- lished as the top-level governance body for the Ever- green Project. Its nine elected members are drawn from service organizations, consortial personnel, and libraries involved with Evergreen.
MassLNC Evergreen Development Initiative is a collaboration among the consortia in the region to pool funds for Evergreen development projects. The initiative was launched by Central/Western Massa- chussetts Automated Resource Sharing and the North of Boston Library Exchange and has been joined by Bibliomation, the British Columbia Libraries Coopera- tive, Georgia Public Library Service, and Evergreen Indiana.
The Evergreen software has been developed and released under the GNU GPLv2 open source software license.
Functionality
Evergreen is an ILS offering a suite of modules addressing standard areas of functionality needed by public libraries, including cataloging, circula- tion, acquisitions, serials control, and an online cat- alog. Consistent with other ILS products, it excels at the management of physical library collections, such as print materials and media collections. Simi- lar to Koha, Evergreen does not fit within the genre
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of library services platforms, which are designed to manage complex collections of electronic resources as well as physical collections.
Evergreen has been under constant enhancement for over a decade. Libraries can expect a reasonably complete feature set. Although libraries evaluating Evergreen will want to carefully review the documen- tation and release notes, some of the general catego- ries of functionality include the following:
• Circulation. As an ILS oriented to consortia, Evergreen offers a powerful and flexible circula- tion module. Loan and renewal periods can be set according to library, patron type, and item type. In addition to standard overdue notices, Evergreen can send out courtesy reminders about items approaching their due dates.
• Patron record management. Installations of Evergreen can define multiple patron categories, each of which can have distinct options for loan rules and collection of statistics. Evergreen sup- ports linked patron accounts for scenarios such as associating the accounts of multiple family members.
• Cataloging. Evergreen includes support for the description of library materials using the MARC bibliographic formats. The system includes the concept of enabling bibliographic records to be grouped into “buckets” to organize or process related items. Evergreen includes the ability to search and retrieve MARC records from external bibliographic sources using its built-in Z39.50 cli- ent. It also includes a Z39.50 server to provide search and record retrieval for external applica- tions. Evergreen includes validation of appropri- ate fields in MARC records with corresponding authority records. As an ILS designed for consor- tia with many libraries and branches, Evergreen includes many features to streamline the creation of holding and item records associated with any given title. The system enables the creation of metarecords to group different editions and for- mats of a title together.
• Acquisitions. The original release of Evergreen did not include acquisitions. This module was added beginning with release 2.0, completed in January 2011. Features available include plac- ing and receiving items ordered, managing ven- dor details, paying invoices, and collection funds management. The system supports EDI for plac- ing orders with vendors electronically and for acknowledgements of receipt.
• Serials. Evergreen includes features for the man- agement of print serials subscriptions, includ- ing the ability to create predictive checkin pat- terns, route received issues, and issue claims for expected issues not received.
• Online catalog. Evergreen provides a web-based online catalog with basic and advanced search options as well as browsing by title, author, sub- ject, or series. Record displays can include cover art linked from a variety of sources or subscrip- tion services. The search interface includes fac- ets presented on the left side for users to narrow search results, according to author, subject, genre, series, or other library-defined categories. Results can be sorted according to relevancy, author, title, or publication date. Search options include limiting results to a specific library or display- ing results from all libraries in the consortium. Libraries implementing Evergreen can configure its catalog to display their own logos, branding, or other standard header features.
• E-book integration. Libraries with e-book lend- ing services can integrate the Evergreen online catalog to present these items along with print materials in search requests, with links to view availability, to download or view, or to add to the hold queue if not available. These e-book inte- gration features are available for OverDrive and OneClickdigital, with the ability to create cus- tomized implementations for other digital lend- ing services.
• Self service. Evergreen supports the ability to work with self-service lending and return kiosks using the SIP2 protocol.
• Resource sharing. Evergreen can participate in resource-sharing systems using standard proto- cols such as Z39.50, SRU, NCIP, or SIP2.
Satisfaction and Suitability
As an ILS optimized for consortia, Evergreen fits well into the trend of libraries seeking opportuni- ties to lower automation costs and to collaborate to share their collections. Consortially shared ILS imple- mentations have existed since the earliest phases of the library automation landscape, but the dominant model has been for libraries to implement individual systems. In the last decade or so, there has been more movement toward libraries that had previously auto- mated independently joining a shared system.
From its inception, Evergreen has been designed to support consortia comprised of mostly small to mid-sized libraries. Table 3.1 lists the major consor- tia that have implemented Evergreen. In addition to these consortia, a number of individual libraries have implemented the software.
Even though Evergreen was developed for pub- lic library consortia, it also gained attention from some academic libraries: University of Prince Edward Island, the Conifer consortium, Algoma University, Laurentian University, Northern Ontario School of
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Medicine, and the University of Windsor. The Uni- versity of Windsor withdrew from Conifer and imple- mented Alma in 2013. There are also some smaller academic and school libraries that use Evergreen as part of a regional consortium.
Apart from these libraries that implemented Ever- green in its early phase, there has not been significant movement of academic libraries toward Evergreen. It lacks the sophisticated electronic resource manage- ment functionality, knowledge bases of e-resource holdings, and discovery indexes expected for aca- demic and research libraries, which tend to invest most of their collection budgets in subscriptions to electronic resources rather than print materials.
Libraries using Evergreen have given the prod- uct and its support providers generally positive rank- ings in the annual Library Automation Perceptions Report. Figure 3.1 shows combined responses for all responses from libraries using Evergreen, regardless of support arrangement. The chart shows a generally upward trend in satisfaction in most categories since about 2010.
There has been only one large municipal library to date that has implemented Evergreen. The King County Library System, one of the largest and busi- est public libraries in the United States, became inter- ested in the mid-2000s in investigating the possibili- ties of implementing an open source ILS to replace its Millennium ILS from Innovative Interfaces. The library wanted flexibility and customizability not easily accomplished in its existing environment. In March 2007, KCLS become one of the earliest clients
of Equinox, which it had selected to provide consult- ing services to enhance Evergreen. As a major munic- ipal library, it required many features and perfor- mance thresholds that were not already present in Evergreen.5 KCLS transitioned from Millennium to Evergreen in October 2010.6
Even within Georgia, the software has not thrived in libraries serving densely populated urban areas. Currently, out of the 62 public library systems in Georgia, 52 participate in PINES, 4 use Polaris, 4 use Symphony, and 2 use Library·Solution from TLC.
The transition to Evergreen for KCLS was extremely challenging, especially in the performance and features of its online catalog. In January 2013, the library transitioned away from the Evergreen online catalog and implemented the BiblioCore discovery interface from BiblioCommons. Many of the other issues KCLS experienced with Evergreen have been largely resolved. The implementation of Evergreen at KCLS had the potential to pave the way for other municipal libraries. Instead, it continues to stand as the only library in that tier to venture into the open source ILS realm.
Migrations to and from an ILS are one factor to consider relative to the suitability or viability of an ILS. Since its inception, there has been an ever grow- ing number of libraries using Evergreen. There has been some churn regarding support arrangements, but most libraries that have implemented Evergreen have remained steadfast. Exceptions include the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium of 40 librar- ies in Massachusetts, which recently migrated from
Table 3.1. Major consortia using Evergreen
Consortium Name Geographic Area Members Types Linn Libraries Consortium Oregon 6 Public, Academic
Georgia PINES Georgia 287 Public
SC Lends South Carolina 58 Public
Evergreen Virginia Virginia 26 Public
Sage Library System Oregon 71 Public, Academic, School
Conifer Ontario 4 Academic
Bibliomation Connecticut 72 Public
Missouri Evergreen Consortium Missouri 38 Public
Central-Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing
Massachusetts 136 Public
NC Cardinal North Carolina 140 Public
PaILS: Pennsylvania Integrated Library System Pennsylvania 88 Public
British Columbia SITKA Consortium British Columbia, Manitoba 106 Public, Academic
Howe Evergreen Consortium New Hampshire 9 Public
Stirling and East Dunbartonshire Library Con- sortium
England 41 Public
King County Library System Washington 48 Public
Evergreen Indiana Indiana 148 Public
Niagara Libraries Evergreen Consortium Ontario 11 Public, Academic
North of Boston Library Exchange Massachusetts 36 Public
Pioneer Library System New York 43 Public
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Evergreen to SirsiDynix Symphony; the Albemarle Regional Library, which with- drew from NC Cardinal and migrated to TLC’s Library·Solution; the Bradford County Library System, exiting from PaILS to implement Apollo from Biblio- nix; the Kent County Public Library in Maryland, which migrated from Ever- green to Polaris; the Santa Cruz Public Library, which used Evergreen for two years before migrating to Polaris; and the Thompson-Nicola Regional District Library System in British Columbia, which moved from Evergreen to Polaris. This number of transitions falls well within what would be expected with any currently supported ILS product.
Technical Characteristics
As an ILS designed for large consortia of public librar- ies, Evergreen in its initial development needed a robust and scalable technical architecture. Contempo- rary enterprise-level business applications were based on the services-oriented architecture. These applica- tions would rely on a transaction processing engine and a services bus able to manage communications among requests.
The Evergreen development team opted to cre- ate their own processing and communications engine, which they called the Open Scalable Request Frame- work, or OpenSRF. This architecture was created in support of Evergreen, enabling it to distribute requests among multiple servers and enabling any instance of the application to handle heavy transaction loads. It relies on the Extensible Messaging and Presence Pro- tocol, or Jabber, to handle messages within the envi- ronment. OpenSRF was intended to be a generalizable architecture that could be adopted for other develop- ment projects, but to date it has been used primarily by Evergreen and related projects such as FulfILLment.
Evergreen uses the open source PostgreSQL rela- tional database to handle transactional data. Post- greSQL was designed to be an enterprise-class data- base able to handle high transaction loads. It is generally perceived as being more complex to admin- ister than MySQL.
Most of the Evergreen server application is pro- grammed in Perl, though some critical components are written in C. This hybrid approach avoids some of the performance bottlenecks that might otherwise occur with wholesale reliance on an interpreted lan- guage such as Perl.
The Evergreen online catalog is web based and will operate well with any modern browser. The staff interface was developed with the XML User Interface
Language (XUL) and is deployed as an extension to the Firefox browser. The Evergreen staff client would need to be installed on each workstation. A new web- based staff client has been under development since 2014.
Forecast
Evergreen has found a fertile niche as the open source ILS oriented to consortia comprised of public librar- ies. It has prospered among library consortia in the United States and Canada, especially those serving mostly small to mid-sized public libraries. Evergreen has seen incremental growth in recent years, espe- cially in terms of additional libraries joining existing consortia. The adoption of Evergreen internationally has been modest. The rocky implementation of Ever- green for the King County Library System has not sparked confidence in Evergreen for large municipal libraries, so it seems unlikely that it will see substan- tial adoptions within that sector unless some major breakthroughs occur. Evergreen is backed by both a strong development community, primarily focused in the United States and Canada, as well as a major non- profit support organization. Overall, the prospects of Evergreen remain strong, and it is likely that it will see a steady and incremental growth in the numbers of libraries and consortia it serves.
Evergreen Resources
Key resources related to Evergreen are available on the Evergreen Project site.
Figure 3.1 Satisfaction Score by Year for Evergreen. Source: Marshall Breeding, “Per- ceptions 2016: An International Survey of Library Automation,” Library Technology Guides, January 25, 2017, https://librarytechnology.org/percep tions/2016.
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Evergreen Project site https://evergreen-ils.org
Equinox Open Library Initiative https://www.equinoxinitiative.org
Notes 1. Georgia Public Library Service, “Georgia PINES An-
nounces ILS Strategy,” news release, June 5, 2004, https://librarytechnology.org/document/10943.
2. Georgia Public Library Service, “Georgia’s 252 PINES Public Libraries Preparing Debut of Evergreen Software, Web-Based Catalog,” news release, August 21, 2006, https://librarytechnology.org/document /12162.
3. Marshall Breeding, “Equinox Launches Sequoia: New ILS Service Based on Evergreen,” Smart Libraries Newsletter 34, no. 2 (February 2014): 2–4, https:// journals.ala.org/index.php/sln/issue/viewIssue /272/34.
4. Marshall Breeding, “Equinox Shifts to Non-Profit Sta- tus,” Smart Libraries Newsletter 37, no. 2 (February 2017): 4–5.
5. Equinox Software, “King County Library System Se- lects Equinox Software, Inc. for Evergreen Services, news release, March 20, 2007, https://librarytech nology.org/document/12463.
6. Marshall Breeding, “King County Goes Live with Evergreen,” Smart Libraries Newsletter 30, no. 11 (No- vember 2010): 4–5, https://journals.ala.org/index .php/sln/issue/viewIssue/311/73.
Chapter References
Breeding, Marshall. “Connecticut Opts for Open Source Interlibrary Loan.” Smart Libraries Newsletter (July 2015): 5–6. https://journals.ala .org/index.php/sln/issue/viewIssue/514/268.
Scott, Dan. “Easing Gently into OpenSRF, Part 1” Code4lib Journal, no. 10 (June 22, 2010). http:// journal.code4lib.org/articles/3284.
Zou, Qing, and Guoying Liu. “Chinese Localisation of Evergreen: An Open Source Integrated Library System.” Program 43, no. 1 (2009): 49–61. https:// doi.org/10.1108/00330330910934101.
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General Background
Kuali OLE was a project that intended to develop an enterprise-class library services platform for aca- demic and research libraries. The project was active from 2007 through April 2016 with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with in-kind and finan- cial contributions from participating institutions. The Kuali OLE software was implemented in three insti- tutions: the University of Chicago, Lehigh University, and the SOAS Library of the University of London. This version addressed only print resource manage- ment and not the full vision of Kuali OLE to provide comprehensive resource management.
The Open Library Environment organization, which managed the Kuali OLE project, continues to be active. The organization has shifted its efforts from building its own software to supporting the FOLIO project.
The eventual demise of the Kuali OLE project illustrates some of the risks involved in open source development initiatives. Factors involved in this proj- ect included both technology and business issues. An early decision to partner with the Kuali Foundation
and rely on its Kuali Rice middleware as the enter- prise service bus for the project ultimately proved unfortunate. Kuali Rice did not advance forward to be able to support the multitenant architecture that was increasingly expected of enterprise business applica- tions. The Kuali projects also made a major transi- tion from nonprofit foundation support to a commer- cial business environment. These events meant that its low-level technical infrastructure was no longer viable, and the project did not have the resources to shift to a new architecture at a relatively late phase in software development. The advent of the FOLIO proj- ect provided the best path forward for the libraries engaged with Kuali OLE to continue their pursuit of an open source library services platform.
Table 4.1, initially presented in the May 2016 issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter, summarizes the projects’ grants from the Mellon Foundation.
Chapter Resources
Smart Libraries Newsletter provided extensive cover- age of the Kuali OLE project.
Kuali OLE (Defunct)
Chapter 4
Table 4.1. Grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for Kuali OLE projects
Date Announced Recipient Scope Amount Feb-16 Duke University Build Phase, Increase technical capacity of
core partners $1,165,000
Dec-13 Indiana University Kuali OLE Build $882,000
Dec-12 Indiana University Kuali OLE Build $750,000
Mar-12 North Carolina State University Global Open Knowledge Base $499,000
Dec-09 Indiana University Kuali OLE Build $2,380,000
Jun-08 Duke University Planning phase $475,000
Total $6,151,000
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Breeding, Marshall. “Mellon-Funded OLE Project Underway to Define Next-Generation Library Automation.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 28, no. 10 (October 2008): 1–3.
———. “OLE Advances Forward through the Kuali Foundation.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 30, no. 1 (January 2010): 1–5.
———. “Kuali OLE Receives Additional Round of Funding.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 33, no. 3 (March 2013): 6.
———. “Kuali OLE: The Open Source Library Services Platform.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 33, no. 9 (September 2013): 1–2.
———. “Kuali OLE Release 1.0.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 34, no. 1 (January 2014): 5.
———. “Kuali OLE Now in Production.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 34, no. 10 (October 2014): 2–4.
———. “Kuali Shifts to a Commercial Business Model.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 34, no. 10 (October 2014): 4–7.
———. “Update on Kuali OLE.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 35, no. 7 (July 2015): 6.
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Stakeholders and Community
The FOLIO project aims to foster a broad community of participants and stakeholders. As an open source project, FOLIO contrasts with the processes involved in the creation of other strategic library products, though there are common aspects as well.
The Role of EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services plays a prominent role in the FOLIO initiative. The company launched the proj- ect and has provided funding, strategic leadership, and promotion. The strategy to conduct the project as an open source initiative also places a bit of distance between EBSCO and FOLIO. Although the company will contribute considerable resources, it will not own the software and will exert influence but not control.
EBSCO has made significant financial contribu- tions to fund FOLIO. The specific amounts have not been disclosed, but it has been characterized as sig- nificantly more than the cumulative funding for Kuali OLE and one of the largest contributions of this kind in the library arena. EBSCO engaged Index Data to begin developing the initial technical platform. The company has contributed its technical expertise to the design of the technical architecture. EBSCO has also been in the forefront of promoting FOLIO. Key company executives have been involved in presenting information on FOLIO to library audiences all around the globe, and its sales force has also played a role in its promotion.
Although EBSCO does not own FOLIO, the proj- ect represents an important facet of the company’s
business and technology strategy. EBSCO Information Services ranks as one of the largest companies in the library industry and provides a diverse set of prod- ucts and services. The company’s traditional focus has been on the creation of content products, especially those based on subject indexing and abstracts. Its EBSCOhost platform provides access to a broad array of content resources. EBSCO has also created a vari- ety of tools for managing electronic resources. EBSCO Discovery Service has become the leading index-based discovery service, competing with products such as ProQuest’s Summon service, Ex Libris Primo, and OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service.
FOLIO has been designed as a modular environ- ment that is consistent with addressing resource man- agement and discovery as distinct functional areas. This approach contrasts with Alma, which has been tightly bundled with Ex Libris’s own discovery ser- vices, and OCLC’s WorldShare Management Services, tied closely to WorldCat Discovery Service. Foster- ing a technical environment that positions resource management systems as separate from discovery can be seen as a means to address the bundling strate- gies of its competitors. FOLIO provides a new choice in the realm of resource management systems in a field of uncomfortably narrow options for academic and research libraries. It also reinforces the concept of selecting and implementing discovery services as a distinct component of a library’s overall technical infrastructure.
The launch of FOLIO can be interpreted as a par- allel move to the acquisition of Ex Libris by Pro- Quest. EBSCO and ProQuest both operate at the top tier of companies in the library industry with diverse portfolios of products, spanning content, technol- ogy, and services. ProQuest catapulted its position in
FOLIO A New Open Source Initiative
Chapter 5
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technology through purchasing Ex Libris, which had established dominance with its Alma library services platform and a vast arsenal of other products. EBSCO likewise has steadily diversified its business activities, with more emphasis on software-as-a-service offer- ings. But rather than making a business acquisition to become more involved with the resource management technologies used by libraries as its rival ProQuest, EBSCO has taken the novel approach of launching and supporting an ambitious project to create a new alternative in the market as an open source software product.
EBSCO will also become involved with FOLIO commercially as a hosting and services provider. The business ecosystem of open source centers on services rather than licenses. EBSCO has indicated it will offer services for FOLIO along with other organizations that may also offer services. SirsiDynix, for example, has made statements that it plans to offer hosting and other services for FOLIO.1
The Open Library Environment
The Open Library Environment, the organization that spearheaded the Kuali OLE project, has engaged with the FOLIO project. The libraries affiliated with OLE currently include
• Cornell University, which joined the FOLIO proj- ect in summer 2015;
• Lehigh University, which implemented the Kuali OLE software and intends to migrate to FOLIO;
• hbz (Hochschulbibliothekszentrums des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen);
• GBV (Common Library Network); • Texas A&M University Libraries; • North Carolina State University; and • Library of School of Oriental and African Studies,
affiliated with the University of London.
Some libraries that were affiliated with the Kuali OLE project have not formally engaged with FOLIO, including
• University of Pennsylvania (has selected Ex Libris Alma);
• Indiana University (no specific strategy announced);
• University of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (no specific strategy announced); and
• University of Florida, which was involved with Kuali OLE during its earlier phase. All of the pub- licly funded universities and colleges are in the process of implementing Sierra from Innovative.
The Open Library Foundation
A nonprofit organization was established in 2015 to support the governance for FOLIO and related proj- ects. The entities currently affiliated with this founda- tion include FOLIO, the Global Open Knowledgebase, and the Open Library Environment. The Open Library Foundation will serve as the legal entity to hold the intellectual property related to FOLIO.
Index Data
Index Data has been engaged as the primary develop- ment organization for FOLIO. Founded in 1994, the company, with offices in the United States and Copen- hagen, Denmark, has extensive experience creating open source software components for library applica- tions. It developed the YAZ toolkit, which has been widely implemented in many library applications to support the Z39.50 and SRU search protocols, and the Zebra search engine.
Sebastian Hammer, cofounder, chief strategist, and president of Index Data, has been one of the prom- inent spokespeople for FOLIO, especially on the bene- fits of its technical architecture and functional design. Peter Murray recently joined the company as its open source community advocate and has been active in outreach and education activities to strengthen the FOLIO development community. Lynn Bailey serves as Index Data’s chief executive officer and chief financial officer. Company cofounder Adam Dickmeiss serves as the chief technical architect for Index Data.
Functional Vision
FOLIO posits a somewhat different vision of a tech- nology support environment from the existing library services platforms such as Ex Libris Alma and OCLC WorldShare Management Services. Rather than a com- prehensive business application addressing a broad range of library tasks within a single interface, FOLIO takes a more modular approach. FOLIO will serve as a lightweight platform to support apps, each address- ing a discrete function. A suite of apps will comprise an implementation of FOLIO to support the library in a flexible and customized way. The concept can be compared to that of a smartphone, where FOLIO rep- resents the basic operating system that can support a wide variety of apps.
The FOLIO environment will include a set of low- level services to manage common data elements and to provide other technical services for each app. A set of interface tools and guidelines will ensure that each of the apps created for FOLIO will present a similar look and feel.
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The app-oriented approach for FOLIO means that any organization might create its own app for each functional area. The initial version of FOLIO is slated to include apps for the core functional modules, such as circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, and electronic resource management. This approach also leaves the possibility that there might be competing apps for a given area and that a library would have a choice of which one best meets its needs. Apps can also be developed for tasks beyond those currently conceived in existing systems. This best-of-breed approach, if it can be fulfilled, would be a unique capability.
The FOLIO community anticipates the eventual availability of a variety of apps, ranging from those that may perform minor utility tasks to others offer- ing full suites of functionality, similar to ILS modules. These apps would be made available through an app store, not unlike those associated with smartphones. Before being made generally available, some type of certification process would validate an app’s compat- ibility with the FOLIO ecosystem, so that it can reli- ably maintain the integrity of data and operate with proper levels of security.
Although designed as a multitenant platform able to support many different institutions, it is anticipated that there will be many different instances of FOLIO. Different support providers, for example, may each want to implement instances of FOLIO with their own selection of apps or other value-added services. Some libraries or consortia might want to have their own entirely separate customized instances. This approach contrasts with that of other multitenant products, such as Ex Libris Alma and the OCLC WorldShare Platform, which are based on a global platform with the same codebase and functionality deployed for all organiza- tions using the product.
Technical Vision
FOLIO has been conceived as a lightweight multiten- ant platform, following a microservices architecture. Several layers constitute the overall design:
• A System Layer forms the foundation of FOLIO, playing a variety of roles providing services for functional apps and for the management of the platform. Some of the components of the system layer include
˳ relational databases ˳ document store ˳ indexing technology ˳ management and configuration for each tenant
• Okapi multitenant gateway, a messaging bus for the exchange of data among apps and the lower- level framework.
• Application Layer, the array of apps that will be
deployed within each instance of FOLIO. • Stripes, a user interface toolkit based on the
React JavaScript framework. This toolkit will pro- vide developers with the means to create a user interface with an appearance and presentational style similar to other apps. It will facilitate more rapid interface construction, saving developers from the need to code commonly used elements.
The technical design of FOLIO is based on microservices, which have gained increasing adoption as the preferred architecture for the creation of com- plex and highly scalable applications. Microservices are constructed as small elements of functionality that operate independently. Each microservice addresses a finite function, manages its own data store, and is deployed on an independent technology stack. A higher-level interface can be presented that spans many microservices and communicates with them via REST APIs with responses delivered in JSON. This architecture contrasts with the previously prevalent application deployment method, which created a sin- gle monolithic executable holding all its functionality. The monolithic development style requires the entire application to be retested and recompiled with every programming change. The microservices approach decomposes the application into many separate ser- vices, each of which can be developed independently of the others. Each service is developed by its own small team, using the programming languages, tools, and technical components appropriate to its func- tionality and its anticipated transaction load. The internal construction of each service is not exposed to the broader application. Many of the largest-scale business environments on the Web implement the microservices architecture, often by reworking their monolithic applications. eBay and Uber, for example, have undergone such architectural transformations.
FOLIO will be made available under the Apache v2 license. This license, while preserving open source requirements regarding use, modification, and redis- tribution, offers considerable flexibility for commer- cial use. Proprietary products can make use of open source components with Apache v2 licenses.
Time Line and Current Status
At this time, the FOLIO software has not yet been completed and thus has not been implemented in any library.
The initial codebase for the low-level FOLIO framework was released in September 2016.2 The on- time completion of this initial benchmark enabled other developers to begin working with the FOLIO framework to become familiar with the system archi- tecture and to begin the development of other tools
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and apps needed to eventually assemble functional implementations.
Building on the core framework, intensive devel- opment is planned for 2017, distributed among mul- tiple programming teams. Work toward initial ver- sions of apps related to resource management, record loading, and circulation will commence, followed by acquisitions, authentication, and integration with dis- covery services. A beta installation of a functional sys- tem is expected by the end of 2017 for testing. The project anticipates its first library to place FOLIO into production in 2018.
This three-year development cycle from the ini- tial design and programming in August 2015 through 2018 seems ambitious for a complex enterprise busi- ness application for academic and research libraries. But this time frame is not inconsistent with Ex Libris Alma, with a three-year interval between its initial work in June 2009 and the first library to place it into production in June 2012.
Forecast
FOLIO faces immense challenges not only in complet- ing an ambitious development schedule, but also in recruiting libraries to adopt it once it is ready. The demise of the Kuali OLE, which ultimately failed to deliver a viable product after seven and a half years of development, may have eroded confidence in the viability of creating a large-scale library services plat- form for academic and research libraries in a com- munity-based open source development initiative. ProQuest’s inability to complete its Intota library ser- vices platform as a proprietary commercial product also reinforces the enormously high level of difficulty.
Despite these obstacles, there are factors that point toward a higher likelihood of a successful out- come for FOLIO:
• Financial resources. Although the exact amounts cannot be documented, funding available for FOLIO, mostly through contributions from EBSCO, greatly exceeds the funding awarded to the Kuali OLE project from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
• Technical leadership. FOLIO technical design has been informed by both the technologists behind EBSCO’s globally scaled content and discov- ery platforms and those at Index Data, a highly regarded library-oriented software development firm. EBSCO has recruited leading technologists and executives with significant experience in the development of major library resource manage- ment and discovery platforms.
• Transparent software development environment. Technical documentation, existing software code,
and other related resources have been made avail- able in the project’s repositories, and the efforts of developers are well coordinated and openly accessible.
• Outreach and publicity activities for FOLIO have been massive, primarily by EBSCO personnel, but also with support from the Open Library Environment.
• Despite the faltering of previous projects, at least some segment of academic libraries embraces the values behind open source software.
• FOLIO offers a fresh vision of technology and functionality. A product that embodies a more recent adaption to current library workflows may be able to establish a foothold in the competition with existing commercial offerings.
• EBSCO has a positive reputation in the perspec- tive of many libraries, and they may be recep- tive to a new technology platform backed by that company.
These factors support some degree of optimism for the prospects of FOLIO, which remains in the devel- opment phase with no libraries using it. Successful completion of key benchmarks will be essential to the success of the project. Delays in the availability of a functionally complete version of FOLIO or initial pro- duction implementations could impede the momen- tum of the project. But barring such difficulties, it seems likely that FOLIO will become part of the ongo- ing landscape of alternatives for academic libraries.
Notes 1. FOLIO, “Introducing FOLIO—A New Collaboration
Bringing Libraries, Service Providers and Developers Together to Speed Innovation and Redefine the Fu- ture of Library Automation,” news release, June 24, 2016, https://librarytechnology.org/news/pr.pl ?id=21713.
2. FOLIO, “The Repos Are Here—FOLIO Source Code Repositories Released,” news release, September 27, 2016, https://librarytechnology.org/document /21910.
Chapter Resources
Folio website https://www.folio.org/
Open Library Environment https://www.openlibraryenvironment.org/
Open Library Foundation http://www.openlibraryfoundation.org/
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Breeding, Marshall. “EBSCO Supports New Open Source Project in Partnership with Kuali OLE.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 36, no. 5 (May 2016): 1–2.
———. “A Progress Report on Library Services Platforms.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 36, no. 8 (August 2016): 2–7.
———. “An Update on FOLIO.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 36, no. 10 (October 2016): 5–6.
Carlson, Lucas. “The Essential Guide to Microservices: How to Create Modern Web and
Mobile Applications That Scale.” InfoWorld Media Group, 2016. www.infoworld.com/resources /105693/application-development/the -essential-guide-to-microservices.
Fowler, Susan J. Production Ready Microservices: Building Standardized Systems across an Engineering Organization. Boston: O’Reilly, 2016.
Scardilli, Brandi. “Working Together toward an Open Source Future.” Information Today 33, no. 9 (November 2016): 1, 26–27. www.infotoday.com /IT/nov16/index.shtml.
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A new open source integrated library system (ILS) was launched in 2015 based on software that was developed at the CERN research facil-
ity in Switzerland for its own library services. CERN is a major research institution in the area of high- energy physics, which has also gained notoriety as the birthplace of the web by Tim Berners-Lee. TIND was launched in 2013 as a spin-off to provide commercial services for the software outside the organizations directly affiliated with CERN. The software is known by the name Invenio within CERN but is branded as the TIND ILS for other contexts.
General Background
Invenio was initially created as an institutional repos- itory platform to manage the technical documents in the field of high-energy physics. Although it has been thoroughly re-engineered at different times, the soft- ware that became Invenio has been in development since the 1990s. The software originated to provide a web-based interface to the organization’s Aleph ILS. The software was extended by about 2000 to function as a document repository for documents and multi- media materials and was known as the CERN Docu- ment Server. CDSware, as the software was originally known, was released as open source in 2002 and was renamed CDS Invenio in 2006. In 2011, Invenio was further extended to incorporate circulation and related functionality, enabling CERN to eventually retire its Aleph ILS. The development of Invenio was performed by the IT department of CERN.
Invenio takes a different approach to library resource management. Its heritage as a repository platform expanded to also address circulation and other library functions gives it a tenor different from other ILS products. In addition to traditional ILS
functionality, the platform can also serve as a pub- lishing platform for an institutional repository.
Invenio has been used widely, especially in the scientific research community, as a document reposi- tory platform. Some of the installations include
• CERN Document Server (the original installation of Invenio)
• CERN Open Data: research data sets made available • Durham High Energy Physics Database (HEPData) • The INSPIRE repository: a collaboration of CERN,
DESY, Fermilab, IHEP, and SLAC • Psifiothiki, a repository of the Aristotle University
of Thessaloniki • Bibliothèque Virtuelle de l’Enseignement Supéri-
eur et de la Recherche Scientifique de Côte d’Ivoire • DESY’s accelerator center, which operates a pub-
lication database • Edudoc: electronic documents in the fields of edu-
cation policy, educational administration, educa- tional planning, and educational research and development in Switzerland
• Himalayan Document Centre • African Institute for Economic Development and
Planning • iMPULSE: publication and documents from the
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum • National Repository of Grey Literature of the
Czech Republic • RERO DOC repository of e-theses, disserta-
tions, e-prints of this library network in western Switzerland
TIND: An Official CERN Spin-Off
Other institutions affiliated with CERN that gained an interest in Invenio implemented the software with
Invenio, or the TIND ILS
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some informal support from the CERN IT department and library. Interest in the software also extended beyond CERN. Because CERN recognized this inter- est and was not necessarily interested in devoting resources to supporting Invenio outside of CERN, TIND Technologies AS was formed in 2013. TIND was founded by Alexander Nietzold and Kenneth Hole to provide hosting and support services for Invenio, which it markets as the TIND.
Most development for the software continues to be performed by the CERN IT department, though TIND has an increasing role. TIND has assembled a host- ing platform and provides services such as installa- tion, data conversion, configuration, customization, and ongoing support for libraries.
TIND’s early customers included libraries affili- ated with multiple offices of the United Nations, The Institute of Applied Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Science, and the University of Applied Sciences in Western Switzerland.
The California Institute of Technology, usually known as Caltech, migrated from its Millennium ILS from Innovative Interfaces to the TIND ILS in September 2015. This implementation greatly increased the pro- file of TIND and has sparked interest in other academic libraries. The Olin College of Engineering selected the TIND ILS in August 2016. Other institutions in the United States have opted for TIND to support their institutional repositories, including Millersville Univer- sity and the University of Minnesota. Caltech recently expanded its involvement with TIND to use the soft- ware to support its Research Data Repository.
Technical Characteristics
Invenio is a web-based application based on Python that’s able to integrate with relational databases including MySQL. Support for PostgreSQL is planned to provide additional scalability. Invenio also use noSQL databases such as MongoDB. Invenio is distrib- uted under the GPLv2 open source license.
Bibliographic data was managed in MARC21 format. Beginning with version 2, Invenio relies on JSON syntax for its data stores. Full-text indexing and retrieval can be supported with an optional Elastic- search configuration.
The application is comprised of around forty dif- ferent modules, each addressing a finite set of func- tionality. Each installation of Invenio would assem- ble the appropriate modules for the functionality required. Invenio is not a multitenant platform, but individual instances of the software support each repository. TIND offers several different versions of Invenio to meet specific needs:
• TIND ILS: a complete integrated library system • TIND IR: institutional repository
• TIND RDM: research data management • TIND DA: digital archive, including digitized
images and video
Invenio Development Community
Invenio has a somewhat different character compared to the other open source ILS products discussed in this report. The development community is a bit more con- centrated in the CERN organization. Most, but not all, developers involved with Invenio are affiliated with CERN or related institutions. The development commu- nity is very active, communicating on a channel in Git- ter. The Invenio Developer Forum holds weekly events, each addressing a selected topic of current interest.
TIND Resources
TIND website https://tind.io
Documentation http://invenio.readthedocs.io/en/latest
Forecast
The Invenio software, as marketed by TIND, has sparked interest in mid-sized academic libraries, espe- cially following its adoption by Caltech. It appeals especially to organizations like CERN and Caltech, which specialize in science, technology, and engi- neering. The TIND institutional repository offers solid functionality and has already been implemented in a variety of important scientific and cultural institu- tions. The TIND ILS has not been adopted in the larger tier of libraries. Its use as a platform for research data management addresses a new area that many research libraries have become interested in entering in recent years. As a new startup, TIND is in a relatively early stage of expanding the position of this open source product and for its services, but its prospects seem promising, especially within specialized niches.
Chapter Resources
Breeding, Marshall. “Caltech Sets Tech Strategy Based on Invenio.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 35, no. 8 (August 2015), 5–6.
———. “TIND Technologies and Invenio: A New Model of Automation for Research Libraries.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 35, no. 8 (August 2015): 2–5.
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O pen source integrated library system (ILS) products currently find use in a relatively modest portion of libraries in the United
States, but the numbers continue to show a gentle upward trend. Of the 9,493 public libraries (17,276 branches) in the United States represented in librar- ies.org, 582 (815 branches) use some version of Koha, and 635 use Evergreen (1,273 branches). This total of 1,217 libraries means that 12.8 percent of public libraries in the United States use an open source ILS. Of the 3,045 academic libraries in the United States, 128 use Koha, and 35 use Evergreen for a total of 163 or 5.4 percent.
The figures give evidence that open source ILSs have become an important part of the library technol- ogy landscape. In the United States and Canada, the impact has been moderate, but a growing part of the competitive environment. In the early days of open source ILS products, a dramatic shift seemed possible. Libraries expressed heightened concerns with some of the vendors of proprietary software, and there were signs that there was the possibility for more of a wholesale turn toward open source alternatives. But fifteen years later, proprietary products continue to dominate, with open source alternatives holding a rel- atively small minority position. But the impact goes beyond the implementation numbers. The presence of open source has increased competitive pressures on the commercial offerings to moderate pricing, acceler- ate development, and improve support services.
To date, large academic libraries have not imple- mented open source ILSs or library services platforms in large numbers. The Kuali OLE project sparked con- siderable interest but ultimately failed to produce a viable product. The new FOLIO initiative has attracted even larger interest, but it remains to be seen if this
interest will eventually translate into implementa- tions once the software has been completed.
Open source software has made a positive impact on the library technology industry. Many libraries have implemented systems based on open source soft- ware and are able to directly take advantage of its capabilities and can assess its value to them. These open source alternatives also have an impact on the overall industry. The mere presence of viable open source products represents an important competitive element. Open source software moderates cost across the board. Those offering proprietary products must take open source alternatives into consideration as they set pricing. Open source developers work hard to meet or exceed the capabilities of the established proprietary products. Those producing the proprie- tary products likewise must continually improve their systems and find ways to meet the expectations of flexibility and interoperability available in the open source realm.
References and Resources
Albee, Barbara, and Hsin-liang Chen. “Public Library Staff’s Perceived Value and Satisfaction of an Open Source Library System.” Electronic Library 32, no. 3 (2014): 390–402.
Breeding, Marshall. “The Current State of Privacy and Security of Automation and Discovery Products.” Library Technology Reports 52, no. 4 (2016): 13–28, 3.
———. “EBSCO Supports New Open Source Project in Partnership with Kuali OLE.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 36, no. 5 (May 2016): 1–2.
The Impact of Open Source Library Resource Management Systems
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———. “Equinox Shifts to Non-Profit Status.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 37, no. 2 (February 2017): 4–5.
———. “A Progress Report on Library Services Platforms.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 36, no. 8 (August 2016): 2–7.
———. “Simon Fraser University Ends Development of CUFTS.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 36, no. 11 (November 2016): 6–7.
———. “TIND Technologies and Invenio: A New Model of Automation for Research Libraries.” Smart Libraries Newsletter 35, no. 8 (August 2015): 2–5.
———. (2009). “The Viability of Open Source ILS.” Bulletin of the American Society for Information
Science and Technology (Online) 35, no. 2 (December/January 2009): 20–25. https://doi .org/10.1002/bult.2008.1720350207.
Pruett, Joseph, and Namjoo Choi. “A Comparison between Select Open Source and Proprietary Integrated Library Systems.” Library Hi Tech 31, no. 3 (2013): 435–54. https://doi.org/10.1108 /LHT-01-2013-0003.
Singh, Vandana. “Expectations versus Experiences: Librarians Using Open Source Integrated Library Systems.” Electronic Library 32, no. 5 (2014): 688–709.
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