The Aspen Discovery 23.04 release introduces community sharing for languages and themes as well as lots of updates to our events functionality including Communico integration

by Jordan Fields on Apr 19, 2023

Sharing is central to the culture of libraries, so there’s nothing more natural than providing our partners with tools to easily share and build on each other’s work. We’re so excited to finally be able to make that easier for our library partners with our Community Content Server. Now libraries can share themes and maintain joint translations with the ability to easily import that content from any other ByWater Aspen partner who has chosen to share"

- Jordan Fields, Aspen Product Librarian

With the introduction of our Community Content Server, libraries have the option to share any theme with the Aspen Community. Libraries will also be able to offer patrons more than one theme, providing options to help with specific accessibility needs as well as patron preferences. The Community Content Server has several new built-in themes including a dark mode as well as both light and dark contrast modes that libraries can download and enable. Themes imported from the Community Content Server can of course also be modified locally to meet branding needs and preferences.

The Community Content Server also comes with shared translations that automatically upload newly translated strings to anyone who has a particular language enabled. Locally modified translations will always remain unchanged.

This release also introduces new event functionality including the ability to save events to the patron account as well as patron lists with support for Browse Categories. The same list or Browse Category can highlight content from both events as well as the catalog, further enhancing the library’s ability to promote content on a specific topic.

We are also launching integration for Communico’s Attend module (events) so that patrons can discover, save, and share events directly in the library catalog. This integration is in addition to our existing integrations with Library Calendar from Library Market and LibCal from Springshare. Our events updates include improvements to the Library Calendar integration so that the functionality matches the integration for LibCal and Communico to the greatest extent possible.

Of course that’s not all! This release has more than 75 total updates including many ILS-specific and partner requested changes.

Check out the complete release notes to learn about everything that comes with the Aspen 22.04 release.

This release includes code contributions from:

• ByWater Solutions

• Equinox Open Library Initiative

• Nashville Public Library

• PTFS Europe

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