News

Get ready! The first cohort of libraries will go live on Aspen starting October 18th. Here is what you can expect on your go-live day. SWAN tasks SWAN will complete the following tasks on your go-live day: Remove the "beta catalog" badge in Aspen Add list copying functions to Enterprise, so patrons can copy lists from Enterprise to Aspen Update your Enterprise catalog with a banner linking to Aspen - see an example banner Add the link to your Aspen catalog on the SWAN patron site and support site Update WorldCat links to point to your Aspen catalog Update the catalog URL in your notices to...

The last Cataloging Users meeting of the year will be held on Thursday, Oct 7, 9:30-11 a.m. Please see the agenda and how to access the meeting: Cataloging Users. We hope you will be there!

RAILS is holding town halls in October and November. Each town hall is two hours long, and they are scheduled at different times to fit a variety of schedules. You can find a list of town halls and registration information on the RAILS home page at https://www.railslibraries.info/news/252552

----------- Update on 10/6/2021 at 08:45------------ We've come across the following Known Issues. Please see those posts below for details: Transit Label Generator Producing Incomplete Labels - Resolved Error Changing Status when Approving BLUEcloud Acquisitions Orders ----------- Update on 10/6/2021 at 06:00------------ The Web Services upgrade has concluded successfully and required less than one hour of downtime. If you encounter any issues with 3rd party tools integrated over Symphony Web Services, please let us know. Tools potentially impacted include the services noted below. ----------...

The Aspen Discovery 21.12 release is live. The highlights of this release include: Staff with masquerade mode permissions can masquerade as any patron, whether or not the patron has logged into Aspen before Fixes to diacritics displaying in grouped records Ability to display placards based on language - for example, you could create two placards, one in English and one in Spanish and display them based on the user's preferred language Improvements to Hoopla grouping, using the subtitle This release included several updates to the index, so our indexes ran long after the release - they are now...

If your library wants to get started with Beanstack now, see the document (below) with base pricing for Beanstack Plus, as well as an overview of the service. Through September 30, 2021, an immediate 15% discount is extended to new SWAN libraries joining. You can reach out directly to Lindsey Hill, Director of Library & Corporate Accounts at Zoobean ( lindsey@zoobean.com). Be sure to let Lindsey know you are a SWAN library. We will work with Lindsey and our libraries on the start-up process. Thanks to everyone who attended the Beanstack demonstration sessions. As we shared at those sessions...

To protect patron privacy, a list of the records eligible for removal is accessible from your BLUEcloud Analytics library account (e.g. SWANLIBSXYZ). An email is scheduled to arrive in the library's general mailbox (xyz@notices.swanlibraries.net) every 2nd of the month. It will contain a link to the History List report in BLUEcloud Analytics. SWAN public libraries received their monthly review of patron records eligible for removal on September 2nd. These reports contain sensitive patron information. Since removal of records will occur approximately 6 weeks after the patron record appears on...

The Cataloging Users meeting will take place via GoToMeeting on Thursday, October 7th, from 9:30 to 12:00. It will depend on the agenda if the meeting will last 2.5 hrs ; however, I will be available for the full duration if need be. Please submit topic ideas for the agenda or questions to claudia@swanlibraries.net. We will send out the agenda a week before the meeting. Please note you will also have an opportunity to ask questions or bring up topics during the meeting itself. I look forward to your topics! Cataloging Users Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet, or smartphone...

Nearly half of our SWAN public libraries are using Beanstack to promote and track reading programs. The folks as Zoobean are offering extended discounts to SWAN libraries based on participation levels. Working with their team, SWAN staff will provide additional support to our member libraries in training, deployment, and tracking with Beanstack. Beanstack staff will lead two quick 30-minute demo sessions from SWAN libraries. Register for one of the sessions (choose your preferred date on the drop-down selection). NOTE: Times may be listed in Eastern time on the Zoom registration form. Tuesday...

I hope everyone is having a lovely Summer! Here are just a few updates on cataloging, pre-cats and what’s coming. Aspen catalog & pre-cats With the implementation of the Aspen catalog in October, we may need to fine-tune pre-cats. This may mean changes to minimum standards such as the appropriate foreign language code in the fixed field for foreign language materials. This will give libraries the ability to promote their foreign language collections, since the language information will be extracted directly from the fixed field. We have not implemented any changes yet. More to come about this...

The 21.11 release for Aspen Discovery is live on our production instance. This was a shorter release cycle, which included changes to the display of the My Account page and improvements to language translation features. View the full 21.11 release notes.

If your library is in the second cohort for the Aspen rollout and training, please save the following dates. We look forward to working with you in 2022! Cohort 2 libraries Beecher Community Library District Bellwood Public Library Berwyn Public Library Bloomingdale Public Library Broadview Public Library District Brookfield Public Library Calumet Park Public Library Calumet City Public Library Carol Stream Public Library Chicago Heights Public Library Cicero Public Library Crestwood Public Library District Crete Public Library District Dolton Public Library District Eisenhower Public Library...

Weeklies 2022 The Weeklies 2022 list has been posted to the support site. The serial controls can be transferred to the new records once 2021 issues are no longer expected. See Transferring a Control Record. Quick reminders: Weeklies use Chronology only, except for the academic journals JAMA and The New England Journal of Medicine. Do not attach the Consumer Reports Buying Guide to the Consumer Reports serial record. The Buying Guide gets a new monographic record every year. Do not attach Crain’s Book of Lists to Crain’s Chicago Business serial record. Crain’s Book of Lists also gets a new...

We have upgraded our Aspen Discovery instance to the 21.10 release. View the full 21.10 release notes. Highlights ProPay integration Initial development on the ProPay integration for fines payment is complete. Additional testing and configuration are needed before we can make fines payment available in the live Aspen catalogs, but it is getting close! Better handling of items checked out to generic users The current location will now display in search results and item detail pages, instead of the home location, in certain cases. This will especially help libraries that check out items to...

The Aspen rollout is fast approaching! These are your library's cohort assignments. For the libraries that selected "no preference," we assigned you to Cohort 1. For any libraries that do not respond, we put you in Cohort 2. Thanks to everyone who has signed up! For those of you in Cohort 1, we look forward to seeing you at the kickoff meeting August 30th - please register on L2. Cohort 1 Acorn Public Library District Alsip-Merrionette Park Public Library District Batavia Public Library District Bedford Park Public Library District Bensenville Community Public Library District Bensenville SD#2...

SirsiDynix will be performing planned maintenance on the Enterprise catalog server on Tuesday, August 10th at 11:00 p.m. This maintenance will require intermittent downtime throughout the process and is expected to take no longer than an hour. We'll be posting a banner to Enterprise to alert patrons. Unless complications arise, no further communication will be issued for this outage.

We are pleased to share the news that Maywood Public Library District will be reopening on Monday August 9. Their announcement that includes their hours and temporary fine free status can be found on their website. They will be rejoining SWAN Resource Sharing when they open. As we adjust their settings in Symphony WorkFlows you may see items being routed to MWS to fulfill holds. Follow the instructions on the screen and route the items to MWS.

If your library is planning to participate in the first cohort of Aspen trainings, you can now register in L2 for the kickoff meeting, office hours, and Aspen Admin training sessions. Note: the Aspen Admin trainings for Purchase Suggestions and Record Grouping have changed, so please update your calendars if you plan to attend those sessions. If you haven't already, sign up for your cohort by Monday, August 23rd. Dates and registration Kickoff meeting August 30th at 10 a.m. Your library's Aspen contact is required to attend. Anyone who will be working in Aspen Administration is strongly...

Following the completion of last week's upgrade to the Symphony server, the deadline for the associated WorkFlows 3.7.1 client update is Monday, August 30th. If you’re unfamiliar with the WorkFlows client update process, please refer to the three steps detailed in Software Downloads & Setup page. After completing the client update on all WorkFlows computers in your library, please submit one FormSite survey to indicate your completion. You can check to see if your library has submitted a survey for this upgrade by visiting the FormSite Results page. If your library does not appear on the list...

Are you aware of how people with disabilities use the library catalog and library web apps? Please join SWAN and Deque on September 21st via Zoom to learn about web accessibility. In this one-hour webinar, you will learn how web accessibility is defined, what inclusive design looks like, and how to ask vendors about the accessibility of the products you purchase for your library collections. The webinar is open to everyone, and we especially encourage anyone who is an administrator to the Aspen catalog, designing a library website, or making purchasing decisions for your electronic resources...