Aspen Discovery Announces 21.01.00 Release and Notes

by Mark Noble on Jan 20, 2021

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the 21.01.00 release, the first release of 2021, is now available. This release includes over 60 enhancements to 16 different functions in the Aspen Discovery system.

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

This release includes over 60 different suggestions from our library partners and fine-tunes Aspen Discovery so that it works even more smoothly for their patrons. We are thrilled to work with our partners to continually improve Aspen Discovery.

Account Updates

• Add an option to select all checked out titles to easily renew multiple titles at once.

• Added a My Account Link within the hamburger menu for users that don't see the sign in link or that have a hard time seeing the account menu.
• Fix deleting records from Reading History when the title no longer exists within the catalog.
• Don't show web notes from Sierra since there is not a consistent place to display it from.

Axis360 Updates

• Additional updates to allow multiple Axis360 collections in the same Aspen instance.

Cloud Library Updates

• Update to allow multiple Cloud Library collections in the same Aspen instance.
• Add the ability to scope individual settings within a consortium.

Collection Spotlight Updates

• Allow Collection Spotlights with a style of Horizontal Carousel to be displayed in a tabbed interface.

• Properly set the source for a collection spotlight when creating it from a list.
• Update collection spotlights created from a list to respect the order of the entries in the list when displaying the spotlight.
• Hide the collection spotlight title in all cases if Show Spotlight Title is turned off, but View More is turned on.

Hold Updates

• Store a patron's preferred pickup location independently of their home library and allow libraries to not let patrons set a preferred pickup location. This allows libraries that do not allow patrons to update their home library to still allow patrons to select a different preferred pickup location. The preferred pickup location can be set when placing a hold or from My Preferences.

• When the patron remembers their hold location, display the pickup location within the success message and if there are multiple possible pickup locations, add a link for how to change the default location.

• Allow libraries to disable allowing a patron from remembering their preferred pickup location.
• Allow libraries to disable allowing a patron from changing their home library.
• When placing a hold on a title, check to see if all items have an associated volume, and if not give the patron the option to place a title level hold rather than a volume level hold.

• Preselect the correct current location when changing the pickup location of a pending hold.
• Updates for placing holds for linked users when the name of the account profile is not the same as the record source.

Indexing Updates

• When indexing lexile score, ensure that the score is numeric or that it is prefixed with a valid Lexile Code.

Koha Integration Updates

• Updates for placing holds with a not needed after date in 20.05 and later.
• Updates to allow materials requests to be added for users with a large number of materials that are checked out or on hold.
• Update so any item with a Withdrawn status that is non zero will be shown as Withdrawn in Aspen.

OverDrive Integration Updates

• Update The OverDrive API form to allow the active settings to be selected to view information about other collections.
• Additional updates to allow multiple OverDrive collections in the same Aspen instance.
• Allow Client Key and Client Secret to be defined for a scope if they are different than the overall key and secret used for indexing.
• Update OverDrive extract so that when multiple settings are provided in a single Aspen installation, all settings update in parallel.
• Correct indexing records where the value for an identifier is not provided.

Permissions updates

• Update loading the lists of libraries and locations available based on new more refined permissions.
• When showing System Messages or Placards, do not show an error message when nothing exists already if the user can only access their library.
• Allow users that can administer System Messages and Placards for their library to delete those items as well.
• Allow Users with View Dashboards permission to view the Usage Dashboard.

Record updates

• When displaying volumes from the ILS to place holds on and when viewing a list of items, use the display order set within the ILS.

Search Updates

• Update subject search to require all words to be found within the subject (previously included the result when any word in the search term matched a subject)
• Update the layout of facets to make sure that checkboxes and labels better align and so that the checkbox is always clickable in Chrome.
• Do not hide the search box on small screen sizes.

Sierra Integration Updates

• Fix placing item level holds in Sierra when the patron selected bypass pickup location.
• Fix loading reading history from Sierra when the patron opts in to Reading History for the first time.
• When checking if the authentication token has expired give a buffer to the check to be sure it doesn't expire before the next call completes.

Statistics and Reporting

• Update Usage By IP report to include the number of login attempts and the number of failed login attempts.

Symphony Integration Updates

• When updating contact information, send the entire original contact information to be sure that Symphony does not clear unchanged fields.
• Properly display city and state within contact information.
• Process any records that have been marked as needing reload at the end of indexing.
• Automatically disable running full update after a full index completes to prevent slowing down Aspen indexing.

Web Builder Updates

• Add an option to have links to resources defined by the library open within a new tab.
• When both the Home and Browse buttons are shown in the top menu, make sure that Browse goes to /Search/Home so the patron can browse the catalog.
• When login is not required for a custom form, display a captcha for the form.
• If a library has indicated that login should be required when submitting a form, display the login form prior to showing the custom form.
• Fix showing PDFs that are not attached to a record.
• Ensure that libraries saved for custom forms redisplay properly.

Additional changes and bug fixes

• Make breadcrumbs for home page and browse consistent with the menu icons.
• In the monitoring script, add a check if an indexing script has been running more than 8 hours and change the cron check to a warning.
• For long library card numbers, ensure that the barcode displayed does not extend past the edge of the browser.
• Correct the display of System Messages while at a library location.
• Do not show error messages when deleting System Messages, Placards, and JavaScript Snippets.
• If there is an error loading the place hold form, make sure to display that message to the patron.
• When a user stops storing reading history, make sure to not reload it from the ILS if they resume tracking reading history.
• Correct the display of full status information for solr cores other than the first core.
• Index the event source within Solr to ensure that events can be deleted properly.
• Remove Sidebar Help Button Text from Layout Settings since it is no longer used.
• Remove old Profile page that was no longer used.