The following speech was delivered by Dan Scott at the 2010 Ontario Library and Information Technology Association AGM and Awards Presentation on February 26, 2010.
"Technical innovation? Looking back at the list of our recent commits, things like improved SIP and Z39.50 server support hardly seem innovative - but that reflects the legacy environments with which we have to interoperate. Some of the more exciting features that our patrons experience directly -- live SFX holdings display, Google Book preview -- are far less work in comparison. Interestingly, it's the nature of Evergreen's agile architecture that makes some of the most interesting advances (the ones that aren't encumbered by decades-old standards) the easiest ones to achieve!
If I was to venture a guess, however, I would imagine that the model of open development and software freedom that Project Conifer has followed to date has been the most innovative aspect of the project: our contributions to the Evergreen open-source library system and the library community in general are in the form of open source code, open discussion, open lists of bugs, open QA tests (as few as there might be), and many sets of shared documentation. And that includes failing openly - yes, sometimes we have problems - from which we learn and grow.
On this snowy day, I'm reminded of how much easier it is to follow in the footsteps of a path someone else has broken - and while we hope that the work we have been doing is making it easier for others to follow in our path, there are a number of brother and sister organizations that we must acknowledge who forged earlier paths, lightened our load, and inspired us:
- Tri-University Group (TUG) - paving the way for major academic consortia, encouraging our efforts in the early days, and providing top-notch hosting for our servers at Guelph
- GPLS PINES - for having the vision to begin the Evergreen project in 2004, to our collective benefit
- Tsuga - the Innisfil Township Library consortium that migrated, host, and support themselves with Evergreen
- Mohawk College - shoulder to shoulder on the same path as Conifer at approximately the same time
- UPEI - for giving me the chance to learn migration skills with production data on somebody else's system
- Equinox - for providing expertise and risk management services - the security blanket that administrators need
Speaking of administrators, I would be remiss if I didn't sing the praises of the directors and assistant directors that made a huge difference to the project:
- Cathy Maskel at Windsor was, well, Cathy; for anybody who has worked with her you know that she tackles the jobs that need to be tackled and which nobody else wants to tackle, and she can be trusted to get the job done
- Lionel Bonin at Laurentian - while technology was not his strength, he demonstrated a quiet confidence in his staff and librarians that fuelled our desire to succeed, even when things looked the bleakest
- Ken Hernden at Algoma and Patty Fink and NOSM - who stepped up their contributions as full partners to the project, a financial and personnel commitment far out of proportion with the relative size of their institutions, but which in all likelihood saved the project
-
Aimee Mullins' presentation yesterday was incredibly inspiring - and reflecting on it for a while, I realized that Project Conifer had faced some challenges that gave us the opportunity to excel.
In 2007, Evergreen was far from an out-of-the-box system for academics (or anyone!); there were many rough edges that needed to be filed down and functionality that needed to be created (circulation periods of less than a day?!). It took vision on the part of the administrators to see that applying resources over time would resolve those problems, and they had to have faith in & support their staff to be able to tackle those problems. As a result, we strengthened our capabilities and made significant contributions to the overall Evergreen project.
One of our major partners withdrew a few months before we were scheduled to go live. Some of the functionality that we all wanted wasn't there, and at that point the whole project could have opted to wait another year for that functionality, or folded altogether due to the severe impact on our finances. Instead, we huddled together and came up with a plan that would see us through:
- migrating our own data on go-live weekend
- swallowing a higher proportion of costs than we had anticipated
And in that experience with a successful launch in May 2009, our little informal consortium forged a determination that has carried us through improvement by incremental improvement. Now, almost a year later, we are ready to continue growing; we will be adding one or more small libraries this spring/summer, and over time we hope that we're an option for more libraries. And a beautiful thing is that as Mohawk and Innisfil have shown, and as Niagara is showing, you don't have to join Conifer. All of the Evergreen code is yours to study, use, change, and share, and we have tried our best to make all of our discussions publicly available so that you can learn from our mistakes.
Speaking of mistakes - I would be remiss if I didn't extend a shout-out to my counterparts at the Conifer partner libraries:
- Robin Isard at Algoma University, who took over my project management role while I was on parental leave and did such a good job that he's still in that role six months later (thank you thank you!)
- Art Rhyno at Windsor, who has seemingly unlimited reserves of energy and enthusiasm and optimism that makes all the difference to the many projects with which he is involved
- Michael McArthur at NOSM, who is a source of quiet calm while learning and disseminating his knowledge to the staff at the NOSM libraries; still waters run deep
And of course - with 24 partner libraries, the staff, faculty, and students have all been an integral part of this process - and they have contributed in so many ways, from reporting bugs to prioritizing features, to simply showing patience at times, to providing encouragement. Because, ultimately, it's all for and about them.
So - thank you for this award. To be recognized by your peers is both humbling and invigorating; this has been a huge boost of energy for our project!"
