News

The SWAN Board is calling for representation from all member library directors/administrators for three at-large positions, with terms beginning on July 1, 2025. The online form to submit the self-nomination statement is open on the SWAN Support site (login required): Submit your self-nomination Information about the SWAN Board election and the timetable are available from the SWAN Support site under the About > Information for Board Members > Board Election. The deadline to submit a self-nomination is Friday, April 25th.

On April 29th, SWAN will migrate to a new help desk and ticketing system. The help desk system, called HaloITSM, is more full-featured than our current solution and will launch with a new user portal for SWAN member staff to place requests, browse our service offerings, and track tickets. If you would like to get a preview of the new portal and learn to navigate it before the launch date, we have a video orientation posted on the support site: SWAN Help Desk Orientation. Members will not need to do anything to ensure a successful transition to the new user portal. E-mailing tickets will still...

Update March 26th, 1 PM: Grove has implemented over-the-air updates for the app on iOS and Android, but they do not appear to be properly triggering an update. If patrons report issues with the app, they can update the app manually. Here are instructions to update apps in Android and update apps on iOS. SWAN has posted a system message banner to the catalog to help guide patrons to update. Update March 25th, 11:45 PM: The server migration is complete and updates to the SWAN Libraries + app have been published to the app stores. Patrons should be able to update their apps early morning...

We have opened a survey for libraries to provide feedback on SWAN's software platforms. This survey can be found using the link below. To keep results manageable, we are allowing only one response per library. Emails to library directors were sent out on February 26, 2025. We are conducting a survey to help gauge your library’s satisfaction with the seven products used by SWAN. The results will be reviewed by the SWAN Board and leadership. This is the second annual survey conducted and there are some small changes from the platform survey from last year. Of interest for this year’s survey is...

The Aspen 25.02 release is live. This release includes: Enhancements to align the holds screen and functions in the app with what patron see in the web interface Helpful features for Aspen Administrators setting up new libraries Features for other ILSes that do not pertain to SWAN (e.g. enhancements to sublocations for Polaris libraries) View the full release notes

We experienced an issue while adjusting the BLUEcloud Analytics reports used to compile the monthly Review Inactive Patron dashboards delivered to your History Lists on the second of the month. The dashboards delivered in January and February still had the inactivity settings from last year rather than being updated to five years of inactivity scheduled to begin this year. We adjusted the reports to five years of inactivity and resent the dashboards to your History Lists. Due to the error, we are pushing back the record purge that will include the new criteria. We will begin using the 5-year...

In March, SWAN will be migrating to a new help desk and ticketing system. While this transition will mostly affect our internal team, the new system has a user portal where member staff can log requests and track their open tickets. We have scheduled two short orientation sessions so interested staff can see the interface before its release. The sessions are listed on L2. Use the links below. Both sessions will be the same. Tuesday, February 25th - 1:30-2:30 Wednesday, February 26th - 11:00-11:30 If you cannot make either session, we will post a recording of the orientation on our support site...

As of yesterday, February 3, NCOA processing on patron records is complete. All updated addresses and geolocation data have been uploaded. Updating patron address information will once again trigger an update to the patron's Last Activity Date, a function that we disabled during this update. Thank you for your patience during the updates. Please view our documentation for recommended steps to take for patron cleanup: National Change of Address (NCOA).

We have received the address change data from Unique and will be updating patron records starting today. The number of patron records sent for processing was 917,567. Of those, 31,349 were returned with address changes for a change rate of 3.4%. In preparation, today we have temporarily disabled the Symphony function to update Last Activity Date when a patron's address information is changed. Once processing begins over the next couple of days, manual address changes may be overridden by this update. During the processing of these records, the following updates will occur: Address changes will...

The January 2025 (October- December, 2024) 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 the SWAN ticketing system. Please wait until you receive your statement before making payments or requesting a credit.

The Aspen 25.01 release is live. This release primarily focused on bug fixes. It also added a WhaZoodle format and filtering options for searches limited to Lists. View the full release notes

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...