Aspen 23.01 release adds updates to website indexing, NoveList integration and linked accounts

by Jordan Fields on Jan 18, 2023

With Aspen Discovery, one of our main goals is to empower library administrators to customize and expand Aspen, and a lot of the enhancements in 23.01 are in service of that idea. Whether it’s control over individual records, like the ability to override series data, or management at a system level, like granting linked accounts permission by patron type, we want libraries to have the tools to create a library experience specific to their community.”

- Jordan Fields, Aspen Product Librarian

The Aspen 23.01 release includes dozens of partner requested updates. One much-requested new feature is the ability to index websites using sitemaps. Aspen can index websites and make those results accessible from the library catalog, although some sites with extensive paging or other barriers can be difficult to crawl to get all site pages. With 23.01, librarians have the ability to provide a sitemap for indexing to ensure every desired page is indexed and included.

Several other partners requested the ability to override series data coming from content enrichment providers such as NoveList. Aspen will now let you set display information for Series Name and Series Display Order to either correct inconsistencies or rename series how you would like for your library.

To help Aspen Administrators better understand the information Aspen gets from NoveList, we’ve also added a page where you can retrieve and review the data the NoveList API provides. Just plug in the ISBN you want data for and you get the text of the API response.

Building off of the new linked account functionality in the 22.12 release, we’ve added a few more features to make linked accounts even better for patrons and libraries. For patrons, Aspen will now display a reminder at the top of the Account Summary page indicating what other accounts can see your account. Aspen also allows Aspen Administrators to set account linking permissions by patron type, with the options to allow all account linking, allow those patrons to only link to others, allow those patrons to only be linked to by others, or to block all account linking.

These are just a few of the highlights of the Aspen 23.01 release. To see a complete list of the 75+ updates to Aspen Discovery and Aspen LiDA, check out our release notes.

This release includes code contributions from:

• ByWater Solutions

• Mike Grgurev - MAIN Library Alliance

• James Staub - Nashville Public Library

• Equinox Open Library Initiative

Thanks to all of our contributors and our community for another successful release!

Read the Full Release Notes

You can find the full release notes here.

Watch a Preview of the Release

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