by The Evergreen software development team has spent the past couple of days attending the PINES Annual Membership meeting and demonstrating the progress we’ve made so far with Evergreen. We are now ready to release the circulation demo to everyone, and instructions are below for accessing the software.
Also, on a related topic, we’ve come to an important milestone in the Evergreen project. When we started on this path, we determined that we would stop approximately a year into the project, assess our progress, and determine if we should continue. We’ve come to this point, and the PINES Executive Committee has unanimously “blessed” the Evergreen project, and gave their permission for the project to continue. We’re very excited about this decision.
Back to the Circulation demo, this release includes some new basic circulation functionality as well as some previously released cataloging functionality. Also, ahead of schedule, a portion of the re-made Evergreen OPAC is back and ready for review. The partial demo OPAC is available here: http://gapines.org/opac/
If you would like to install the Evergreen staff client demo on your computer, follow the instructions below. Alternatively, if you would just like to view screenshots, you can certainly just follow the walk-through below without actually installing the software.
Instructions for installing the demo:
(Note: in the production version of the software, the following multiple installation steps will not be required.)
If you are behind a firewall, you must allow outgoing connections on port 80.
In order to test this demo release, you must download and install the Firefox web browser on your local machine. You may download Firefox from this location:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
(The download link is in the upper-right corner of that page.)
After downloading and installing Firefox, download the Evergreen staff client package from here:
(Note: This demo will expire on June 3rd) http://open-ils.org/downloads/evergreen.xpi
You should right-click on the above link and choose Save Link As… and then save the evergreen.xpi file to your Desktop.
Then, from within Firefox, choose the option File -> Open File from the menubar at the top. Find and open the evergreen.xpi file from the resulting Open File dialog window.
A dialog will pop-up asking if you would like to install the software. Choose Install Now.
Once the xpi file has been installed, you must completely restart Firefox.
After restarting Firefox, you must enter the following text into the address/location bar and press the enter key.
chrome://evergreen/content/
This will present you with Evergreen’s Login Window. At this point you should probably turn down the volume on your computer. Some of our error messages are accompanied with various beeps, whistles, and shrieking, and as this is not even alpha-quality software yet, you may encounter some loud errors. To login, enter the username demo and the password demo.
Evergreen’s main window will then pop-up with the PINES and Evergreen names and the PINES logo. Note that this isn’t any sort of official Evergreen logo– we’re just playing around.
Pressing Function 2 or choosing Circulation -> Check In from the top menubar will bring up the Check In interface.
Like Firefox, Evergreen presents the user with a “tabbed” interface. Press Control+T or choose File -> New Tab from the top menubar. Then press Function 1 or choose Circulation -> Check Out to bring up the Check Out interface in the new tab.
You may then click on each tab to bring up the corresponding interface, or alternately, cycle between them by pressing Control+Tab, or jump directly to one or the other by pressing Alt+0 or Alt+1. Evergreen will have extensive keyboard support in the production release.
Hello – this is looking great! Good job. Teresa
How do we find the barcode number for items so we can check them out? I don’t see where item id appears.
Also: I would like to be able to search for title=_________ AND author=________ AND keyword=_____________ (not just one of these at one time). Is that going to be available.
I would like to press the “enter” key after information has been entered without having to use the mouse.
I know you are addressing these items, but it never hurts to mention them again. Thanks, Jim Cooper
Hi Jim,
In the Search Catalog interface, when you see a title record, right-click on that record and you should see options for MARC editing and Copy Browsing. It’s the Open Copy Browser option that you want. In the future, we’ll add some more visible/obvious ways to do this and make it accessible without need of the mouse.
For the multiple search criteria in the OPAC, I believe the intention is to allow that sort of functionality, and to even let catalogers specify what tags and subfields they wish to search (ie. 245a: Harry Potter). The ability to do this is available to us now, we just haven’t integrated it with the OPAC yet.
We’ll definately make the enter key do something useful like submit a search request.
Thanks for pointing these out!
— Jason
This looks good. I have a couple of questions. Will the patron ID number print on the receipt or will that be option? And, when you do a search for a patron and get multiple results, you look at one record and that is not the one you want, how do you get back to the results list?
Hi Dawn,
Everything on the receipt will be customizable, including whether or not the patron ID number is displayed. “Easy” customization may be limited to choosing between prebuilt templates, but more flexible customization will be possible.
For the patron search result screen, right now if you make it dissappear (by say, using the Edit button on the Patron Summary Pane), you can’t get it back. However, in the future, we’ll let you spawn the patron interface into another tab, We could do this by overriding the behavior of the existing “quick command” buttons, or by adding new interface options such as a right-click menu on any given patron row in the result list. Another possibility is to just remember the search, so if you pull up the search screen, it does not reset; however, I’d prefer to find alternatives to that option.
Thanks!
— Jason
I have only looked around for a bit, but like the general functionality. Navigation is kind of “clunky” as I miss the back buttons, etc. I’m anxious to see how the MARC fields will display in the editor. And if I didn’t know how to access the MARC from the PINES meeting demo – right clicking on the title text – I would never have figured out even viewing it. So more instructions on navigation on screen are needed or have the MARC editor be a tab or pulldown. In the search area I do like the display showing formats and numbers of titles and items. And I like the hot linked subject lists on the screen with the item display. So lots of good things, we just of course want more!
I have a comment about receipts. In the demo info I read, it said that receipts would be totally customizable and that you can set the system to print receipts automatically or not. Does this mean we’ll also be able to print receipts after the fact, in case a patron changes his/her mind about not wanting a receipt for payments, renewals, etc? If so, that would be great.
Mandy,
Yes, you will be able to print receipts after the fact. I think in the long run you’ll also be able to email receipts, save receipts to files, etc. And most if not all of the data that is presentable in the staff client will be printable, especially anything that resembles a list.
Thanks!
Jason
Jason, are you (and the gang) still taking “requests” for development of Evergreen? One of our libraries has made such a request, and I wasn’t sure who to forward it to. Thanks – Roberta Wilder, ECGRL
Absolutely! We have two mailing lists with which you can correspond with us and other interested parties ( http://open-ils.org/listserv.html ), or you can e-mail us directly at feedback@open-ils.org