News

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...

As shared in our Fireside Chats and in previous communication, we will be removing all bills for patrons with a last activity date before January 1, 2011 and less that $100 in total bills. This represents 10+ years of inactivity. These patrons have not used library services requiring use of their library card even years before we migrated to SirsiDynix Symphony. Since the system will not allow patrons with bills on record to be removed, these patron records remain in perpetuity unless removed. Prior annual purge processes have allowed these patron records and bills to linger based on that...

The SWAN Aspen Discovery catalogs will be upgraded to version 21.09 this evening. There will be no downtime and all Aspen functions will work normally. However, you may see some discrepancies in availability on Tuesday, August 3rd as this upgrade will impact our overnight Aspen indexes. Aspen upgrades will not affect Enterprise access. Highlights for this release include: Performance enhancements that should improve nightly index speeds and loading times for large checkout histories Option to allow locations (such as drive-up windows and lockers) to be restricted as a valid pickup location for...

Aspen is coming! Sign up for your go-live dates and training. Please sign up by Monday, August 23rd. Sign up Libraries in the first cohort will be ready to go-live on Aspen at the end of October 2021. Through September and October, SWAN staff will provide an Aspen training series and regular office hours to help you configure your catalogs and prepare to support patrons. Libraries in the second cohort will be ready to go-live on Aspen in March 2022, with trainings held starting in January 2022. Save the dates for the first cohort If you plan to participate in the first cohort, which will go...

On July 28th, SWAN hosted a panel discussion on auditing collections for diversity. The goal of the session was to share the experiences of Illinois libraries performing these audits and give an opportunity to learn from each other. The session lasted two hours, and a recording is available on the support site for anyone interested: Panel Discussion: Diversity Audits We are happy with how this event turned out and hope to plan more sharing sessions on this topic in the future.

Kanopy is offering a discount based on the amount SWAN libraries new to Kanopy commit to spending in one year. The start date for the discount is September 1, 2021. Discount details All libraries that subscribe to Kanopy will receive the discount but only new Kanopy subscribers will count toward the commitment. The commitment amount is an estimate. Because two libraries added Kanopy in July 2021, we have reached the $10,001 commitment and all libraries will receive the 5% discount. If we reach a $50,001 added commitment all libraries will receive a 10% discount. If we reach a $100,001 added...

The July 2021 (April-June) 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 sheet 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.

Please be aware, RAILS is currently experiencing a server outage at their Burr Ridge datacenter. This outage affects the following services: Logins to all RAILS websites and RAILS-specific services Logins and access to L2 (Library Learning) events and directory website Logins to the SWAN support site (this site) as these authenticate via L2 You can still access any content that does not require a login Logins to the SWAN ticket website as these also authenticate via L2 You can still email support issues to help@swanlibraries.net No other SWAN services are impacted by this outage. We'll submit...

We have further evaluated this consortium-wide console game limit and have decided to move forward with the Circulation Advisory Group recommendation to lower the limit to 5 checkouts. Starting tomorrow, patrons will be limited to 5 checkouts of each console game item type -5 CONSOLEGAM, 5 CONSOLENEW, etc. It is important to use the correct item type for these limits to apply. SWAN will be reaching out to any libraries cataloging console games with an item type other than CONSOLEGAM or CONSOLENEW so the system can work properly. Please send any questions to help@swanlibraries.net. ------------...

As data has shown, patron behavior is consistent regardless of the method used for overdue blocking. Patrons return material on time at a high percentage. Approximately 1% (.86% at 22 days; 1.33% at 15 days) of 522,000+ items checked out were overdue, as reported on June 28, 2021 at our last Fireside Chat. We want to allow libraries to determine the best patron experience for their community. A poll of Fine Free libraries conducted in April-May, 2021 shows the following preferences: Fine Free Library: Which of the following blocking conditions does your library prefer? Results Percentage Block...

---Update on 2021-09-07 at 11:00 a.m.---- This process has been delayed to better prepare our libraries and patrons for the change. Watch for upcoming news post announcements including recorded instructions for processing these accounts and an updated timeline. ----Original Posting on 2021-07-13 at 11:15 a.m.---- Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, SWAN had suspended a process to purge expired temporary online cards in order to provide online-registered patrons with additional time to verify those cards with library staff. Now that many libraries have reopened and online-registered patrons have...

In an effort to ensure our catalog represents diverse groups of people respectfully, SWAN's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force has launched our first batch of updates to subject headings. For this phase of the project, we have updated subject headings using the terms "illegal aliens" and "aliens", mirroring recent changes in government terminology and many other library systems. We performed the change with an automated script that will continue to update subject headings as new bibliographic records enter our catalog. For more information on these changes and guidance for catalogers...

Are you interested in purchasing the Kanopy streaming service for your patrons? SWAN is working with Kanopy to offer a group discount for SWAN libraries. Please join Paula Roman, Senior Account Executive, for an overview of Kanopy's streaming video patron interface and a live Q&A session. This session will not be recorded. If you are interested please register and plan to attend the live webinar. Register through L2 and Zoom