Aspen Discovery Announces 20.12.00 Release and Notes

by Jessie Zairo on Sep 9, 2020

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the 20.12 release is available. This major release includes 1 new feature, 72 improvements, and 2 minor changes.

Mark Noble, Aspen Discovery Developer, recently commented on the release:

In this release, we focused on some larger (yet subtle) changes that most front end users will not notice, but that elevate Aspen Discovery for everyone. There are numerous accessibility improvements to make Aspen Discovery easier to navigate for all users. We enhanced the theme system so libraries have even more control over the look and feel of Aspen Discovery. Finally, we completely revamped the permissions system to give Aspen Administrators more precise control over what can be changed and who can change settings. This will bring added value to consortial users.

Accessibility Updates

• Hide covers used only for links from screen readers.
• Improve accessibility of lists of administration options.
• Correct additional header hierarchy on all pages.
• Add titles to additional elements.
• Change required indicator from red * to the word required for improved accessibility.
• Update selection of Language to use links rather than a dropdown.

Administration Updates

• Add a new administration page at /Admin/Home with all the actions an administrator can take with descriptions of those options.
• Replace the hard-coded role-based permissions system with a new system that includes the ability to define your own roles and to apply specific permissions to roles.
• Allow a role to be automatically assigned to a user based on patron type.
• Move determination of if a patron can see the staff settings page to patron types rather than the config file.
• For passwords, fields use the label of the field as the label for repeating that field.
• For password, fields ensure that the repeated password is correct both with backend validation and javascript validation.
• Add a new field type for regular expressions
• When creating new libraries through the interface, default Prospector integration to be off.
• Add logging of server stats within API to check server status and do not warn in low memory usage.
• Add checking of server wait time to server status check.
• Check Free disk space for /data and /usr directories independently.
• Allow debugging information to be emitted to specific IP addresses.
• Make a user permission for if the test_role parameter can be used

Axis 360 Integration

• Create a new module for Axis 360 integration.
• Define settings for Axis 360 integration (multiple can be defined for consortial usage)
• Define scopes for Axis 360 integration.
• Index records based on Axis 360 APIs such that they appear within Aspen search results.
• Add an Indexing Log for Axis 360 so extraction results can be viewed and monitored.

Catalog Home Page / Browse

• Update browse page to use a true masonry layout.
• Update Aspen to track history as the user changes the selected Browse Category and allow patrons to go back to previously viewed categories.

Combined Results Updates

• Fix loading catalog search results when defaulted to combined search results.

Content Cafe Integration Updates

• Translate incorrectly encoded double quote marks retrieved from Content Café.

DP.LA Integration Updates

• Correct empty searches of DP.LA within combined results

Indexing Updates

• Add the ability to specify a field to load audiences from. Using this option will require an audience map to be created.
• Correct for cases where there is no item record number exported from an ILS, but the barcode is available to automatically use the barcode.
• Update indexing for contributors to include multiple roles and to properly sort the role from the name of the contributor.

Interface Updates

• Change the terms Login and Log Out to Sign In and Sign Out to user terms more familiar to users.
• Update breadcrumbs to be more meaningful and help to guide the user through Aspen.
• Remove the vertical menu bar in favor of a new horizontal menu with dropdowns for account actions and general menu.
• Update the modal dialog to scroll within the body of the dialog rather than having the entire dialog scroll.
• Remove library top links that were not being used by libraries.
• Add library links (formerly sidebar links) to the Aspen menu.
• Remove Masquerade header and display
• Always display breadcrumbs even in the mobile view.
• Sort multi-select facets shown in the popup in columns rather than in rows.

Koha Integration Updates

• When using the Koha Materials Request functionality:
  • Default the library to the patron's home library
  • Default the item type to BOOK or BOOKS if valid
  • Default the quantity to 1

Masquerade Updates

• Convert masquerade to use permissions on a role rather than being defined by Patron Type.
• Allow restrictions on specific patron types such that a user must have specific permissions to masquerade as them.

OverDrive Integration Updates

• Remove OverDrive advantage columns from the library table if they exist since that content is in the OverDrive Scope table.

Record Display

• Show the lists a record appears on within the full record display for a record.
• Properly display contributors to records with all roles that they contributed.

Symphony Integration Updates

• Properly handle cards that never expire.
• Cleanup local cache when logging out of Symphony via Aspen.
• Properly load patron profile (patron type) for each patron.
• Update Symphony integration to use ilsCode rather than subdomain when connecting to the APIs.
• Update Literary Form determination for Symphony Libraries to use the default method.

Theming Updates

• Add Merriweather font as an option for Heading Fonts
• Update icons for menus and tables to use Font Awesome rather than PNG files so icons adapt to colors selected by libraries.
• Allow theming of the new menu bar.
• Allow theming of the modal dialog.
• Update theming for result tool buttons, search tools, and breadcrumbs to allow them to be customized.
• Update theming for result labels and result values to allow them to be customized.
• Update theming for links in the hover state to be customizable.
• Update pagination controls to be bootstrap buttons for better accessibility and theming.
• Update all action buttons to be certain they are action buttons rather than primary buttons.
• Make the display of availability accessible on all backgrounds.
• Fix colors for tables that show status to set the foreground color in addition to the background color for accessibility.
• Fix display of visited buttons to show proper color.
• Fix striped table colors to ensure color contrast is accessible.
• Make all default colors accessible.
• Remove old silk icons that were no longer displayed from templates.

User Lists Updates

• Correct generating citations for lists including materials from EBSCO EDS.
• Fix creating covers for lists that have entries that are not grouped works on them.
• Fix sorting of user lists for users that aren't the list owner.
• List layout fixes for large screens.

Website Indexing Updates

• Add the ability to specify a regular expression to use when extracting a title from a page.
• Add the ability to specify a regular expression to use when extracting the main contents from a page.
• Index and display descriptions for web pages.
• Updates to better handle indexing a subset of a site to properly handle relative URLs.