Deb

April 20, 2014 To: School District Administrator From: Deb Morley

Dear District Administrator,

I’m writing to you to express my concern about the decision that has been proposed to migrate the school library cataloging system for the district from Alexandria to Evergreen.

I understand that cost is a driving factor for this decision however, I have talked with our IT Director and he has indicated to me his concern that while the Evergreen software is free and open source, in order to acquire the needed technical support for installation and ongoing maintenance, a contract would need to be purchased with a third party provider costing nearly as much as our annual contract with COMPanion, the vendor who provides us with Alexandria. Also, the cost of any professional training for the new system has not been factored into the overall cost of making this change. In order to successfully migrate all of the school’s library patron data and bibliographic records into Evergreen and learn the backend functions of the system, a two day training class is recommended that both I, the other librarian, and one person from IT should attend. I also want to remind you that in the current agreement with Alexandria, we do not pay anything extra for software upgrades so staying with the Alexandria system does not warrant additional investment.

While there have been a few issues with Alexandria during the time we have used the system, many of those have been eliminated once we moved from running the system ourselves to the vendor’s online hosted system. COMPanion has been around since 1990 and has an installation base of over 10,000 sites. It is a known and more fully developed library system than Evergreen.

One of the biggest advantages of an open source system like Evergreen is the ability to participate in the software development and customize the system to include features needed or desired by the school. Since the district does not have any software developers on staff, we cannot take advantage of the open source development options. Alexandria updates are based on customer needs. We have been successful in approaching COMPanion as a district and having needed features included in their software updates.

Other challenges that Evergreen would impose are the need for all libraries in the school district to agree on like policies and procedures, the problem with the system function that the library that owns an item takes precedence for borrowing privilege, and that the school’s website filter and search engine (netTrekker) is integrated into the Alexandria library catalog. Evergreen does not offer this option. Also, three of the school’s in the district (including ours) uses COMPanion’s Textbook Tracker automation system for circulating, tracking, and account of textbooks that are used in the classrooms.

While I realize that we must be mindful of costs and figure out ways for the district to save money, the change of moving from the current library catalog (Alexandria) to Evergreen would in fact include the hidden costs that I’ve mentioned, would result in lost functionality and negatively effect library operations and service to our students and teachers.

Thank you for considering my request that we remain with Alexandria. Appended below I have included the criteria by which the librarians in the district feel a system should be selected and by which the Alexandria system exceeds Evergreen as a choice. (Please note that the district librarians have submitted a request to Alexandria which they are reviewing, to develop a collaborative student interface to further enrich the catalog.) I am available to meet with you or others to further discuss this matter.

Sincerely, Deb Morley __Criteria for Catalog System Selection: __
 * Web-based
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Cross platform, can be used on both Windows and Mac
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">User-friendly for both patrons and staff
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Easy to import or export records
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Easy report generation
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Ability to run customized reports
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Cost is acceptable
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Supports multiple sites but with individual site policies
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Readily available customer support
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Good technical support from local IT and vendor
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Good documentation
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Training available
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Good vendor relationship (vendor takes customer input for new features and updates)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">Includes catalog enrichment (ability to display book jacket images, collaborative student interface for writing reviews, making recommendations and creating book shelves with books read and to read.)