Evergreen developers and community members gathered for the annual hack-a-way retreat in mid-November. Organized by the Evergreen Outreach Committee, hack-a-way provides an opportunity for Evergreen stakeholders to collaborate on software improvements and hold discussions about future project directions.

This year's hack-a-way was held at Endicott College in Beverly, MA and was hosted by North of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) and CW MARS. Twenty-five community members representing 12 organizations attended in person, with several others from across North America and Europe attending remotely.

Discussions at the hack-a-way included upcoming infrastructure upgrades to Evergreen, better handling of translations for monthly releases, project tooling and technical needs, website updates, and plans for the major Evergreen 4.0 release which will be forthcoming in 2025.

Community members also gave updates on longer running projects: independent developer Ken Cox discussed his Hemlock Evergreen app; developer Scott Angel of MOBIUS demonstrated his work on a staff dashboard; and developer Stephanie Leary of Equinox Open Library Initiative reported about the extensive progress she has made with accessibility improvements to Evergreen.

In addition to the discussions, several dozen bugs were reviewed and worked upon by hack-a-way attendees both in-person and remote. Some of these bugfixes went into the November point releases, which are available on the downloads page: https://evergreen-ils.org/egdownloads/. Other fixes are slated for future point releases and feature releases.

"The annual Evergreen hack-a-way has evolved into an event where contributors to the Evergreen software can focus on the technical direction of the software," says Kathy Lussier, NOBLE Executive Director. "Software developers working for Evergreen libraries sit side by side with developers representing vendors to solve problems and improve the software, reflecting the collaborative spirit of this open-source community. This type of collaboration never fails to result in a product that truly meets the needs of the libraries using it. I am gratified that NOBLE, along with our Evergreen partners at CW MARS, could support this important work by hosting this year's event."

The Evergreen community extends our thanks to NOBLE and CW MARS for being excellent local hosts, and appreciation to Endicott College for the working space.

About Evergreen

Evergreen is the leading open source ILS for consortia. Evergreen delivers local flexibility and policy granularity, as well as third-party interoperability via its truly open APIs. Evergreen is licensed under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later, and is available to all for download at no cost from the Evergreen web site at https://evergreen-ils.org/.

About the Evergreen Community

The Evergreen community is made up of individuals, libraries, companies, and other organizations that support and use the Evergreen ILS. Evergreen is highly-scalable software that helps patrons find library materials and helps libraries manage, catalog, and circulate those materials, no matter how large or complex the libraries. More than 2,000 libraries around the world use Evergreen.