ByWater Solutions Announces Aspen Discovery 21.14.00 Release

by Mark Noble on Nov 10, 2021

We're delighted to have Aspen LiDA available to library patrons in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store with this release. Aspen LiDA lets patrons find and use physical materials and eContent from their library in an easy to use new interface. Our libraries are very excited to have Aspen LiDA available to their patrons as a complement to Aspen Discovery"

We're excited to announce the release of Aspen Discovery 21.14!

This release features a lot of backend and infrastructure work to Aspen Discovery to increase scalability and real time monitoring of everyone's systems. This backend work may not offer the glitz and glamor of some of our other releases, but we are excited to see how these proactive processes better support our Aspen partners. We have found with this release that indexing is quicker, as some of our partners have millions of records. We made the ability to more easily identify deleted records in Overdrive more streamlined. Additionally, we made several ILS-specific improvements since Aspen Discovery is ILS-agnostic and supports a variety of partner needs.

As a part of the backend work, we have enhanced the ability to use real time monitoring of everyone's servers so that we can be proactive about any changes to servers or tell if there is any bad metadata on servers. Every couple minutes we are receiving results directly integrated into our Slack Channel so that we can easily identify critical vs. non-critical reports and better support our libraries.

Libraries will also see a few enhancements with theme and layout. We now have a "jump to the top arrow" within search results that match the libraries theme colors and we turned on by default. This can be turned off/on in Layout settings but we think libraries and patrons will find helpful to navigate results. Additionally, placards have been enhanced with the option to "X" out or close out the placard if they would no longer like to see the placard displayed. Libraries can now choose between the "X" out option of the "Don't show this again" option, depending on the population they serve and what will best suit their needs.

Finally, this release is an exciting one because of the enhancements added to the Aspen Discovery app, Aspen LiDA. We released new branding for the app and revamped the appearance on the Discover screen to better mirror the layout of popular streaming services. Now users can easily view multiple curated lists of collections. Users can easily see the available formats of each title and can now check out, place holds on, and quickly access ematerials. Download for free now in the Google Play and Apple App Store.

We hope users will love the changes as much as we do!

Read the Full Release Notes

You can find the full release notes here.

Watch a Preview of the Release

Watch a Demo of the Newly Released App Features

About Aspen Discovery

Aspen is a full-featured Discovery System that integrates with eContent and other third-party providers, giving your patrons comprehensive access to all of your materials in one place. Aspen combines your library catalog with e-content, digital archives, and enrichment from all major third-party providers. It also improves relevancy and ease of use, provides native reading recommendations, displays all formats of titles within one result (record grouping), and much more. With included features like web builder and mobile app (Aspen LiDA), Aspen was created to give users an improved experience over other Discovery systems, with less impact on library budgets.

For More Information

Jessica Zairo
Director of Library Sales and Outreach
ByWater Solutions
bywatersolutions.com
Phone:(888)900-8944