The Grand Rapids Public Library went live on MIchigan Evergreen yesterday – see MLC’s News page and the Michigan Evergreen blog for details.  There were the usual first-day hiccups, but today all seems to be running smoothly.  Niles District Library is scheduled to go live on Michigan Evergreen next week.

This is a pretty exciting time for MLC in the world of open source technology.  Michigan Evergreen, our shared open-source ILS,  has kept us busy the past several weeks training the pilot libraries and working with Equinox and GRPL on the migrations.  It has been a true challenge for us to work in a “no vendor” environment on this project, as it presents a new and different model for working with our member libraries.  Open source is changing the way we think and the way we work – a whole new world!

This Friday, MLC’s Annual Meeting, “Open Source, Open Libraries,” will feature LC’s Daniel Chudnov and representatives from the Michigan library community talking about open source in libraries. We just learned that registrations for the Annual Meeting have sold out (although the system will accept “waiting list” registrations through tomorrow).  Pretty cool to know that our members are as interested in open source as we are.