News

SWAN staff will be having our January in-service event on Friday, January 26th. Membership support and inquiries will be delayed until Monday, January 29th. Don't worry though, we will be monitoring for emergencies!

Each year we host a meeting presentation of next year’s SWAN budget and membership fees, and this year’s meeting will take place via Zoom on Tuesday, February 6th at 10 a.m. Below is information about the meeting. Meeting packet with budget & membership fees EBSCO year-5 renewal information is included in the above packet. Registration for the Zoom meeting is required in advance. If your library...

The January, 2024 (October- December, 2023) 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...

The Aspen 24.01 release is live, and it includes several updates for the Aspen LiDA app, including a link for fines payments, improvements to prompts, and the ability to display links to your library website. Aspen LiDA updates Link to fines payment The app now includes a link to fines payment page in Aspen Discovery. The user will stay logged into their account when linked from the app...

A majority of SWAN libraries closed due to inclement weather today, some through tomorrow as well. As a courtesy, we have extended holds that would have expired today through this weekend. Holds with "Pickup by" dates of January 12th-15th will now expire Tuesday, January 16th to avoid patrons receiving Hold Cancelation Notices for items they were not able to retrieve due to closure or weather.

As of yesterday, January 2nd, 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. Please view our documentation for recommended steps to take for patron cleanup: National Change of Address...

SWAN will begin removing Fiscal Cycle 2021 from Symphony on January 15, 2024. Be sure to compile any order, vendor, or fund information you may need with this fiscal cycle before then. Please open a ticket if you need any assistance.

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 964,328. Of those, 32,581 were returned with address changes for a change rate of 3.3%. In preparation, today we have temporarily disabled the Symphony function to update Last Activity Date when a patron's address information is changed. Once...

The Aspen 23.12 release is live, and this is our first release since going live on Aspen LiDA. From now on, our release updates will also include a section on updates for the app. Highlights for this release include: Relevancy updates This release includes some changes aimed at improving results for exact title searches. Some of the changes to relevancy include: Deprioritizing series matches and...

We have sent out a survey directly to all of our current library directors/administrators with the following introduction and link to the survey. This survey requires a login to complete and only one submission per library is requested. The survey is now closed.

The SWAN-branded instance of Aspen LiDA, the SWAN Libraries + app, is live and available to download in the iOS and Android/Google Play stores. Note: We're not yet seeing the app appear when searching the Google Play store, but you can access it through the direct link. SWAN recommends a public announcement date of December 26th for patrons. Prior to this, library staff can get acquainted with the...

We presented at the Quarterly meeting for library directors and administrators our recommendation to move forward with Aspen Library Discovery App (LiDA). The SWAN Board met afterward and approved that recommendation with ByWater Solutions, the company supporting the LiDA app. We have a recording of the presentation about Aspen LiDA available. This recording is the SWAN Quarterly presentation that...

SirsiDynix and Solus, the vendor that provided support and development for BLUEcloud Mobile, have been unable to come to an agreement that would continue functionality of the current BLUEcloud Mobile app. The current BLUEcloud Mobile app is not expected to be restored. SWAN has been in the process of researching and preparing for a pilot of a new app. Unfortunately, this development with BLUEcloud...

The rebuild process concluded late Thursday Staff may resume all activities in WorkFlows. We will be rebuilding our indexes over Thanksgiving Day. Please refrain from accessing Workflows after close of day today. We anticipate that this will have little to no impact on service since it is occurring over the holiday. We will send an all clear message when you can resume normal work functions...

SWAN staff will be unavailable on Thursday, November 22 and Friday, November 23 due to the holiday. On-call staff will monitor for emergencies. When to Call 844-792-6542 (844-SWAN-LIB): A service is down Circulation is impacted Unable to perform key job functions When to open a ticket: Questions and troubleshooting Report request Aspen Discovery changes Integrating new services Track Known Issues...

Update 5:00 PM - Scheduled reports have caught up. Update 12:04 PM - The overnight indexing report was terminated due to a large number of records. Subsequent maintenance reports are now running, but it will take time for the schedule to catch up where it needs to be. Item records should no longer be locked. One of our nightly index maintenance reports is running longer than anticipated. Other...

Kanopy is having a great end of the year promotion for any libraries interested our flagship Pay-Per-Use (PPU) streaming video service, which includes over 31,000 films and tv shows. From November 13 – December 22, any library that comes on board will receive their first full month of usage for free. Libraries would just need to agree to receiving their launch email with live link on or before...

The Aspen 23.11 release is now live. This release includes: A bug fix for an issue with non-public notes showing for some multi-volume Symphony records Additional updates for Aspen self registration to make this tool compatible with Symphony Email function to send automated emails when a patron self registers The Aspen self registration tool is not yet available for use by SWAN libraries. We are...

The Addison Public Library data migration is complete! The library ran offline circulation over the weekend and today the library is circulating in SWAN. We have updated the membership map on the Support site and have posted a listing of all libraries three-letter codes and barcode prefixes. Addison's code in SWAN is ADD. Per our go-live approach for new members, Addison will operate in a limited...

Unique has launched a beta version of their new and improved MessageBee portal. This new version contains new reporting aspects of MessageBee. There is now the ability to view communication statistics in various ways-by channel, then by day, week, or month. Please look at the beta version and bring questions to either of our office hours listed below. MessageBee Office Hours, December 12 th @ 10...