1. THE HISTORY OF EVERGREEN IN ARMENIA
Tigran Zargaryan
National Library of Armenia
Director
4 June 2019
Themed Week

2. THE HISTORY OF EVERGREEN IN ARMENIA
In early 2008 following a call for participation 7 eIFL libraries were selected as a pilots for working with Evergreen.
Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences was amongst them.
Each pilot library was invited to participate in an intensive technical training workshop in Yerevan (Armenia), in June 2008.
4 June 2019
Themed Week

3. THE HISTORY OF EVERGREEN IN ARMENIA
Dan Scott of Laurentian University (Canada) and Henri-Damien Laurent of BibLibre (France) lead the training at the workshop on Evergreen and Koha, respectively.
The 2 day workshop was hosted by the Fundamental Scientific Library.
Topics covered include:
comprehensive demonstration of Evergreen functionality
install-fest: guided installation of Evergreen
data conversion and migration scenarios
Z39.50 modules, localization issues
4 June 2019
Themed Week

4. MOTIVATION FOR EXPLORING EVERGREEN
Armenian libraries are using Aleph proprietary system of ExLibris as an automation tool.
All enterprise level proprietary ILS systems has significant costs involved in licensing fees & maintenance and support contracts.
The possibility of reducing the financial burden of the FSL through the use of Evergreen FOSS ILS is a primary motivator for us.
Another factor is the role of leadership across the institutional libraries within Armenia and becoming a centre of excellence.
4 June 2019
Themed Week

5. INITIAL INSTALLATION
For gaining initial experience on working in FOSS communities and for estimating the whole power of Evergreen, it was decided to implement Evergreen in the National Academy of Sciences institutions libraries.
Consortium of 30 research institution libraries was established.
Fundamental Scientific Library allocated:
a server for hosting the Evergreen system;
technical staff for server and workstation installations and maintenance,
trainers for training institutional librarians ho to work with Evergreen.
4 June 2019
Themed Week

6. INITIAL INSTALLATION
4 June 2019
Themed Week

7. 4 June 2019
Themed Week

8. Current situation
4 June 2019
Themed Week

9. Current situation
4 June 2019
Themed Week

10. Current situation During our 3 year work in Evergreen community, we:
have localised Evergreen into Armenian (and also into Russian);
with the EG developers are piloting and harmonising Evergreen display and search functionalities for Armenian and Cyrillic scripts.
Current version of Evergreen being in use by NAS Consortium is
4 June 2019
Themed Week

11. Current situation
Evergreen community is growing very fast and new versions are replacing each other often.
FSL as a centre of excellence in FOSS and library automation in Armenia must be able to pilot new versions of the system on a regular basis.
For these purposes we allocated second server and currently we are running on that server EG version 2.0.5
Playing various migration scenarios is very useful task for FSL technical staff and systems librarians.
4 June 2019
Themed Week

12. Current situation
For example we are facing a problem when importing bibliographic database from version into the version
Another problem which we should solve, is exporting the patron database for importing into Koha.
To all our questions we receive professional help and support from EG community which is one of major benefits for FOSS communities.
EG OPAC provides patrons with a clean look, and is very functional.
4 June 2019
Themed Week

13. Conclusions
If you are looking for a FOSS ILS system with good community support and modern futures, then evergreen is a one which I will recommend.
From my point of view, ‘Authority Control’ still needs improvements.
During bibliographic data migration from your old ILS system to Evergreen, I will strongly recommend to use Marc Edit
4 June 2019
Themed Week

14. Conclusions For accessing NAS Consortium OPAC, please visit
4 June 2019
Themed Week

15. E-mail: tigran@flib.sci.am
THANKS FOR ATTENTION!
4 June 2019
Themed Week