The Evergreen community proudly unveils its latest feature release, version 3.12.0, a collaborative effort involving contributors and organizations from the United States, Canada, and Czechia.

Accessibility and Tooling Improvements

In this release, the dedicated team prioritized accessibility enhancements and tooling. Key improvements include:

• Updated core interface components
• Resolution of a longstanding OPAC autosuggest issue
• Enhanced navigation in staff interfaces
• Addition of landmarks and headings in the staff catalog for efficient screen reader navigation

Stephanie Leary, Front End Developer at Equinox Open Library Initiative and a member of the Evergreen 3.12 release team, emphasizes the ongoing commitment to addressing accessibility issues. Leary states,

"Fixing all of our accessibility bugs will be an ongoing process, but with the core UI improvements in place, our community developers are in a much better position to tackle the problems that are unique to each screen."

Developer-Friendly Tooling

The release team also directed efforts towards empowering developers by updating automated tests to detect accessibility problems through code analysis. This strategic move enables developers to focus on nuanced accessibility and interface issues, rather than basic errors.

Additional Features

Notable features in this release include:

• Introduction of a new staff catalog tab to display NoveList added content
• Infrastructural improvements enabling Evergreen to leverage Redis as an internal messaging service
• Porting of several interfaces to the Angular framework, enhancing Evergreen's web-native interface capabilities

Evergreen's Continued Leadership

Evergreen remains the premier Integrated Library System (ILS) for consortia, offering unparalleled local flexibility and policy granularity. Positioned as open-source software under the GNU GPL (version 2 or later), Evergreen is available for free download at https://evergreen-ils.org/.

About Evergreen

The Evergreen community comprises individuals, libraries, companies, and organizations supporting the Evergreen Integrated Library System. Evergreen, used by over 2,000 libraries worldwide, is highly scalable, facilitating patrons in finding library materials while assisting libraries in managing, cataloging, and circulating materials, regardless of size or complexity.