Aspen Discovery Announces 21.02.00 Release and Notes

by Mark Noble on Feb 11, 2021

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the 21.02.00 release is now available. This release includes 47 enhancements to 8 different functions in the Aspen Discovery system.

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

In this release, we're thrilled to improve our OverDrive integration to make it even easier for patrons to use. With this release, patrons are now able to: search for Kindle books, view previews for OverDrive materials, and interact with OverDrive Magazines. Administrators also have the ability to get more insights into how their patrons are interacting with OverDrive with new statistics.

OverDrive Integration updates

• Add the ability to show previews for OverDrive content within Aspen Discovery. When available, actions for each sample provided by OverDrive will be shown below the option to place the title on hold or checkout the title.

Clicking on the option to view the sample will open the preview within Aspen and will allow the patron to open the sample in full screen view.

• Add a specific format for Kindle Books from OverDrive within the facets list as well as the Grouped Work display. (Ticket 75193)

• Update the display of OverDrive Magazines that have been checked out to link to the main record within Aspen and show titles base on new structure of OverDrive data. (Ticket 77571, 77550, )

• Add tracking for more stats within the OverDrive Dashboard. In addition to tracking holds and checkouts, Aspen will now track: Failed Holds, Failed Checkouts, Early Returns, Holds Frozen and Thawed, Downloads, Previews, Options Updates, Errors, and Connection Failures.
• Add a graph to show OverDrive usage over time.
• Remove the option to Download Supplemental materials for OverDrive Checkouts that do not have the materials coded properly. (Ticket 77752)
• Update OverDrive extraction to allow extracting from multiple collections simultaneously. (Ticket 77101)
• When indexing titles from shared collections, make sure to only share it with members of that collection. (Ticket 77571)
• Update the API Data testing page to work better within consortia with multiple scopes and different keys for each scope.
• Allow deleting more than 500 titles or 5% of the collection at once for cases when the catalog changes dramatically.
• Add handling for additional date forms in OverDrive records.
• Added handling for cases where an OverDrive product does not have metadata loaded. (Ticket 77643)
• Add the ability to load OverDrive information in the API Data page using the cross reference id to make it easier to grab identifiers from the OverDrive site.
• Add a new diagnostics page to show information stored in the database about an OverDrive title.

Administration updates

• Administration pages are now paginated to make showing areas with lots of values faster. The page size can be changed and you can easily jump to a specified page from the interface.

• Administrators can now batch update individual fields when viewing a list of settings.

• Administration pages can now be sorted even by fields that are not visible in the table and sorting works properly with pagination and filtering applied.

Grouping and Search updates

• Added the ability to define authorities for authors within Aspen. Each authorized value can have multiple alternative values. Authorities stored within Koha will be automatically imported into Aspen Discovery. (Ticket 70384)

Reading History updates

• Track the last time that reading history was updated and only update every 5 minutes from the user interface and only update as part of the cron process if the user has not updated their own reading history that day. (Ticket 76524)
• Detect cases where updating reading history updates don't progress for 10 minutes and terminate the process. (Ticket 77347)
• If we detect a case where reading history does not update properly for a patron, retry up to 2 times after pausing for 2 minutes. (No ticket)

Symphony Integration updates

• Update loading checkouts to load the author properly for titles that are checked out, but not in the catalog. (Ticket 77347)
• Add a timeout when loading information from Symphony Web Services to ensure that Aspen does not become unresponsive if Symphony does not respond in a timely manner. (Ticket 74294)

Other updates

• Update loading checkouts, holds, and reading history for patrons when Cloud Library and Axis 360 to use the patron's home library rather than the active library. (Ticket 77347)
• If the value of a facet is empty, do not show the value in Aspen (Ticket 77539)
• When compiling regular expressions for translation maps, trim the values. (Ticket 70384)
• Added a troubleshooting page to the Help Manual with information about a browser setting that causes issues when trying to access PDFs online. (Ticket 76966)
• Added a troubleshooting page to the Help Manual with information about a library being marked as closed when we load holiday's from Koha. (Ticket 77352)
• Allow the Google Font Rubik to be used for headings and body fonts. (Ticket 77729)
• Correct a formatting issue when more than 4 or more series values are available for a title. (Ticket 77581)
• When uploading images within Web Builder, make the full size image required. (Ticket 77896)
• When using aliases for web pages and forms, trim off query parameters when checking the database. (Ticket 77680)
• Resolve a notice when loading information from Novelist if Title Information does not exist for a record.
• Do not cache browse categories to avoid performance issues when deleting browse categories when lists that the categories are generated from are updated.