Laurentian University's J.N. Desmarais Library will receive two provincial awards from the Ontario Library Association (OLA) for Project Conifer, an integrated library system developed by a consortium of universities, during the OLA conference to be held in Toronto from Feb. 24 to 27.

Partners, including Algoma University, the University of Windsor, and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, will share the Ontario Library and Information Technology Association Award for Technological Innovation and the Ontario College and University Library Association Award for Special Achievement.

The Conifer integrated library system uses the Evergreen library system, that was originally developed by the Georgia Public Library Service. As open source software, Evergreen is freely available for others to modify, use, and redistribute. Project Conifer supports 24 different libraries and resource centres across northern Ontario. Its partners share hardware, support, and development costs.

Laurentian University's systems librarian, Dan Scott, has been the lead developer for Project Conifer since its inception in July 2007, and was the project manager until August 2009.

"These two awards recognize Project Conifer for its innovative and collaborative approach in adopting an open source library system, and highlights the project as an example that others can follow," Scott said.

"By sharing the responsibility for the maintenance and development of a core library resource, the partners in Project Conifer have demonstrated that it is possible to work together across institutional boundaries to deliver a system and related services that is far superior to what they could accomplish on their own. It also enables the partners to determine their own priorities for system development."

For its part, Laurentian has contributed to Project Conifer (and by extension the Evergreen project) in a number of significant areas:

• internationalization for the public and staff interfaces: since adopting Evergreen, the number of languages with full or partial support has increased from one (American English) to nine (including Canadian French, Armenian, Czech, and Russian)
• journal management for print and electronic collections
• enhanced support for standard library system protocols such as SRU, Z39.50, and SIP (used by a new self-checkout station)
  
• system documentation for Evergreen administrators and training materials for Evergreen developers
  
• improvements to the ease with which Evergreen can be installed, configured, and used