News

Your key to the OCLC Community Center: Insights from Library Staff on Enhancing Library Value Tue, Jan 28, 2025 01:00 PM EST Join us for an insightful panel discussion where seasoned library staff members share their experiences with the OCLC Community Center. Discover how this platform enhances collaboration, streamlines workflows, and fosters professional growth within their libraries. Our panelists will discuss: Practical strategies for maximizing the Community Center's resources. Success stories highlighting the impact on library services. Tips and tricks for effective engagement with...

Year in review A new "Year In Review" feature will show patrons fun facts about their 2024 library usage and recommend titles for 2025. We have enabled this on the consortium catalog. If you would like this enabled for your library or have feedback for the developers for next year, please submit a ticket. Patrons will see their Year In Review if: They have checkout history enabled and They have checked out titles in 2024 Library staff may not see the Year In Review in masquerade mode. A patron must directly log in to their account to activate it. New formats Aspen now includes formats for...

SWAN will be closed the following days: Tuesday, December 24th Wednesday, December 25th Tuesday, December 31 Wednesday, January 1 RAILS and RAILS Delivery are also closed those 4 days. SWAN will have limited staff on the days we are open between December 20th and January 2nd. We will be back to our normal schedule and staffing starting Monday, January 6th.

OCLC has planned maintenance that will impact access to various products and services including: Connexion, CONTENTdm, FirstSearch, WorldCat Discovery, WorldCat.org, WorldShare Indexing, WorldShare Interlibrary Loan, WorldShare Record Manager, and WorldShare Reports. The unavailability will be for approximately six hours during this maintenance window beginning Friday night, 12/20 until mid-day Saturday, 12/21. Service status can be monitored on the Dashboard. Information about the maintenance is available on OCLC's " planned events" page. If you experience problems with any OCLC service...

Due to a power outage at the Oak Brook Public Library, the December 5th SWAN Quarterly meeting will be held online only. Oak Brook Public Library is currently closed and there will be no in-person meeting. Register on Zoom prior to the meeting.

The Aspen 24.11 release is live. This release includes: Improvements for masquerade mode Library staff can now resume working on your current page when starting and ending masquerade mode. For example, if you start masquerade mode from a search results page to place a hold, you will stay on your search results instead of being directed to the My Account page. This was a request from our Discovery & User Experience Advisory group, and we hope it will make your workflows assisting patrons much smoother. Updates to the Overdrive integration Overdrive made changes to their API integration, which...

Over the past week, we have experienced performance issues and downtime of our Aspen catalogs: All catalogs and the app, accessed from anywhere, were extremely slow or down from 11/13 through 11/14 A small handful of libraries have reported they cannot access the catalog or app within their library networks If your library is unable to access the catalog from your library network, please contact SWAN support. We have now learned from ByWater Solutions, our support and hosting provider for Aspen, that we are experiencing a denial of service (DoS) attack. This attack is ongoing, and ByWater has...

The Aspen catalog will now display a new order for formats within grouped records. Previously, formats were listed alphabetically. This change should be especially noticeable for books, where you will now see physical book formats above eBook formats. You can see the format order in our updated grouped works documentation, or check in out in your catalog! A big thanks to our Discovery & User Experience Advisory group (DUX) which worked on the new order.

The Weeklies 2025 list has been posted to the support site. The serial controls can be transferred to the new records once 2024 issues are no longer expected, or new controls can be created in the 2025 records. See Transferring a Control Record. Quick reminders: Do not attach Crain’s Book of Lists to Crain’s Chicago Business serial record. Crain’s Book of Lists also gets a new monographic record every year. Weeklies use Chronology only, except for the academic journals JAMA and The New England Journal of Medicine. As a refresher on serials call numbers, magazines published monthly must have...

The October 2024 (July-September) Quarterly Billing is complete, and the invoices and checks will be mailed shortly. Documentation is available to help guide member library staff through the Billing Summary workbook as well as the detail statement reports folder accessible in BlueCloud Analytics Shared Reports. Library Directors have been provided with BCA login credentials. If you are a Director and do not have access to the BCA reports, please open a ticket at help@swanlibraries.net. Please wait until you receive your statement before making payments or requesting a credit.

Update 10/28/24 2PM: After careful consideration, we've decided to postpone this update for the time being. We will update when an alternative date has been chosen via SWANcom and an updated news post. To re-iterate, there will be no downtime. The 6.4.2 update will not be taking place. Original Update 10/16/24 2:23PM: SirsiDynix has scheduled an upgrade of our Symphony Web Services after-hours on Thursday, October 31st at 11pm. This 6.4.2 release includes new, enhanced and user-inspired features and fixes to reported defects. This upgrade is expected to last approximately 60 minutes and will...

The 24.10 release of Aspen is live. This release includes: Improved date display for OpenArchives The dates display for OpenArchives results can be updated for a friendlier display. This is a setting that SWAN will enable for libraries using the OpenArchives integration, and you should see the update tomorrow. Additional sort options in the app for Checked Out Titles The SWAN Libraries + app now includes sort options in the Checked Out Titles screen, including sort by library account for linked accounts. Future enhancements This release lays the groundwork for several new features. These will...

Update 10/11/24 3:40 PM: Aspen is now processing Symphony exports successfully, and slowness issues have been resolved. If you see any additional issues, please open a ticket. Update 10/11/24 8:00 AM: We're seeing issues with Aspen processing Symphony exports, so any changes to items or bibliographic records will not appear in Aspen until these issues are resolved. Update 10/10/24 7:00 PM: The server upgrade was successful, and My Account functionality is now available. However, it will take some time for the Symphony exports to catch up, so item statuses may be incorrect. ByWater Solutions...

SirsiDynix will be performing maintenance on our BlueCloud Analytics server today at 4:00pm. BlueCloud Analytics will be unavailable during this time and it is expected to last 30 minutes.

Do you want to get involved in a SWAN working group? Self-nominations are now open! Working group members complete special projects and assist SWAN staff in decision-making. Working groups require a commitment of at least one year. Learn more about each group and sign up: Circulation Working Group - Self-nominations due October 21, election October 22-November 11th Cataloging Working Group - No sign up required, Cataloging libraries will receive meeting links Discovery & User Experience Working Group - Sign up by November 11th E-Resource Working Group - Sign up by November 11th

The 24.09 release of Aspen is live. This release includes bug fixes and the following enhancements: Custom sort order for formats in grouped works Currently, the formats within a grouped work start with "Book", then list additional formats alphabetically. We now have the ability to sort formats within a grouped work in any order. At the next Discovery and User Experience Advisory meeting, the group will discuss considerations for changing the format order. Self check updates We are still awaiting work for Aspen to use the Symphony APIs for self check in Aspen LiDA, so self check is still not...

Access to OCLC services may be affected through Saturday morning, 9/14/2024 System maintenance is scheduled to start at Sep-13-2024 23:00 Central Time through Sep-14-2024 11:00 Central Time affecting the following services: CONTENTdm, EZproxy (hosted), FirstSearch, ILLiad, Tipasa, WorldShare Acquisitions, WorldShare Circulation, WorldShare Collection Manager, WorldShare Interlibrary Loan, WorldShare License Manager, WorldShare Record Manager, WorldShare Reports and Report Designer There are no enhancements with this event. Check OCLC System Status Dashboard to determine if this event completes...

Update 9/11/24 10:20AM: We have been informed the server migration was unsuccessful. We are still awaiting a fix for our ILS export processing issues, so you will continue to see incorrect item statuses in Aspen. Update 9/11/24 9:05AM: Following the server migration, Aspen is not processing item status and record changes from Symphony. We are in touch with ByWater solutions to address this issue. ByWater Solutions, our Aspen Discovery hosting and support provider, is upgrading our Aspen production server, this evening Tuesday, September 10th between 8PM and 10PM. This is the previously...

We are excited to announce a new item category for item records in WorkFlows! Item Category 6 can now be used to designate languages other than English. Several foreign language options have been populated in this category, and you can begin assigning them immediately. Like all item categories, Item Category 6 does not impact circulation or hold rules in any way. It also does not display in the public catalog. It is meant for staff use only. Item Category 6 is not yet available for reporting in BLUEcloud Analytics (BCA). SirsiDynix is working to add this in a future release. In the meantime...

Are you using the best links for your electronic resources? SWAN will help you make sure your patrons are using OpenAthens to authenticate. OpenAthens is a complete, secure solution protecting patron privacy by not releasing any personally identifiable information (PII). Over the course of the next year, libraries will be broken into 12 groups. At the end of each month, new tabs will be added to the spreadsheet until all member libraries are listed. The new links have been tested and should be updated immediately. Links for these libraries are available: Group 1: Addison, Acorn, Alsip...