The Discovery Working Group is comprised of library staff across public and technical services. The group supports the SWAN discovery platform through participation in user research and testing; library staff training; and input on development priorities, configuration changes, and desired enhancements.
Agenda
- Development updates from 25.05, 25.06, and 25.07 (15 minutes)
- Discussion: Including Goodreads in the catalog (10 minutes)
- Activity: Search Relevancy Analysis (60 minutes)
- Discuss examples and categorize
- Special topic: Hoopla relevancy and integration
- Demonstration: Search relevancy scores
- Prepare recommendations, questions for Aspen developers
- Reminders: Expo registration and online patron registration
- 2026 meeting schedule and group sign ups - open in September! (5 minutes)
Notes
Tara Wood reviewed recent Aspen developments, including the recent update to display all format options in the format filter. There was a request to also display all options in the language filter, so patrons can see all languages available. SWAN has requested this enhancement from our support vendor.
Following this past release, some libraries have experienced issues editing placards. Olivia Montolin contacted our support vendor and had these resolved by the end of the meeting. Libraries have also reported getting "kicked out" of search results when entering masquerade mode from the search results screen. This will need some further investigation.
Tara and Olivia shared recent vendor discussions around Hoopla Flex. While we're eagerly awaiting Hoopla Flex integration into the catalog, it is unfortunately not compatible for consortia quite yet.
The group also reviewed our development priorities, several of which have been completed this year. We're keeping an eye on improvements for the "While You Wait" suggestions that appear when patrons place a hold, which will hopefully be ready in the next release. We also discussed the in-progress work to handle library-of-things in the catalog, which Downers Grove Public Library will pilot. This work would only include certain item types in a library's catalog if they own them, which could improve results for searches for hotspots and other popular library of things items. SWAN plans to share more about this project following the start of the pilot.
The group reviewed the current Aspen Goodreads integration available, which displays the top reviews from Goodreads in the search details pages. They'd like to see the aggregate review score and a link out to Goodreads; Tara will investigate if this is possible.
Finally, the group began a review of search relevancy, reviewing the examples gathered by group members. Some immediate areas identified for investigation include:
- Better search results when including a format as a keyword (e.g. DVD, book)
- Potentially boosting results for uniform title, so foreign language title results appear higher in results
The group also discussed Hoopla results as a pain point - they frequently appear higher in results due to oddities with records. For example, including "The Simpsons" as an author gives Hoopla results that include "The Simpsons" as both a title and an author a higher relevancy than other records that properly identify the author.
In our discussion, the group noticed some title author searches already had much better results than when they were last reviewed.