April 10 2008 British Columbia SITKA Will Migrate 15 Libraries to Evergreen in 2008

15 more libraries will join the British Columbia SITKA (formerly BC Pines) Consortium in 2008, bringing the consortium to 18 member systems. In preparation, BC Libraries have signed a contract with Equinox Software Inc., which will provide comprehensive migration services and support, including library data expertise, consultation, and system configuration.

The migrations will begin this month as Terrace and Whistler Public Libraries go live by the end of May. Over the summer, 11 other libraries will follow suit with the final two libraries, Mackenzie and Taylor Public Libraries, scheduled for early to mid-November 2008.

British Columbia is following a gradual approach to moving libraries over to Evergreen as libraries will “opt-in” on their own schedule. Prince Rupert Public Library became the first to switch over in late 2007. Over the next three to five year period it is expected that a high percentage of British Columbia libraries will participate as their contracts with their existing automation vendors expire.

Bob Molyneux, VP for Business Development at Equinox noted: “With 241 individual libraries in over 70 systems, British Columbia resembles Georgia’s environment both in the number of libraries and the demographics of the areas represented. However, if all BC public libraries eventually join SITKA, the combined circulations will be around 52 million--about three times that of PINES. A number of the BC libraries, though, are quite a bit smaller than those in Georgia and there are three in this second group that currently do not have an automation system. Evergreen's scalable architecture is designed to handle both the larger circulations and the smaller libraries.”