Aspen Discovery Announces 21.03.00 Release and Notes

by Mark Noble on Mar 4, 2021

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the 21.03.00 release is now available. This release includes 37 enhancements to 6 different functions in the Aspen Discovery system.

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

In this release of Aspen Discovery, we're happy to make improvements to help highlight all of the wonderful work that catalogers at our libraries do. This release improves format determinations for special collections like Video Games, combination packs, braille, and vinyl. It also makes improvements to how records are automatically grouped to handle movie remakes and other difficult to determine situations. We're also really excited to see how our libraries use some of the web builder enhancements that allow web developers to have more control over the information entered into Aspen Discovery.

Indexing Updates

• Updates for determining format based on bib data. (Ticket 74740)
  • Add a new format for Blu-ray / DVD combination packs.
  • Add a new format for CD + DVD packs.
  • Add a new format for Audiobooks on MP3-CD.
  • Add a new format for PlayStation 2.
  • Add a new format for PlayStation Vita.
  • Add a new format for PlayStation 5.
  • Add a new format for Nintendo Switch.
  • Add a new format for Nintendo DS.
  • Add a new format for Xbox Series X.
  • Improve handling for PlayStation titles to allow abbreviations.
  • Check for Braille titles using 008 position 23.
  • Properly separate music recordings on Vinyl from music recordings on CD.
  • Improve handling for Playaway titles to detect them in more cases.
  • Properly handle titles that have multiple 007 fields.
• When setting up Indexing profiles, change the fields that are visible based on how Formats are determined (bib, item, specified field).
• When setting up Indexing profiles, change the Format Boost from a numeric value to a set of values from None to Very High to make setting boosts easier to understand.

• Remove unused Regroup Unchanged Records setting from Indexing Profiles.
• Properly suppress OverDrive records from Koha when a bookseller of MarcExpress is provided. (Ticket 77800)
• Improve the speed of indexing by not using the permissive MARC reader unless loading fails with non-permissive loader.
• Optimize saving indexing notes.
• Decrease the interval between indexes for Symphony.

Grouping Updates

• Update so that part information (MARC 245 $n and $p) are never trimmed from the grouping title. This ensures that some records that are part of a series, but that don't have specific titles for each member of the series are not grouped and gives additional control to librarians. (Ticket 74119)

• Update to use uniform titles (MARC 130) when grouping titles. This helps to differentiate editions of movies. (Ticket 74742)

• When records are regrouped, force both the original and the new works to be regrouped to ensure titles show properly. (Ticket 73657)

• Add the ability to regroup all records from a collection with a setting in Indexing Profiles.
• Merge Record Grouping project into indexing project.

Searching Updates

• Update searching to properly handle selecting multiple format facets. (Ticket 72269)

System Updates

• Create a new user to run aspen indexing code and a group for the web server. (Ticket 70633)
• Automatically generate a secure passkey file with random information in it for encryption. (Ticket 77161)
• Automatically encrypt Personally Identifiable Information within the user table. (Ticket 77161)

Web Builder Updates

• Update Aspen to allow HTML to be added to Markdown fields and to allow an HTML editor to be used rather than the Markdown editor. The options can be modified within the System Variables page.

Other Updates

• Add APIs to load information about browse categories to the SearchAPI. (Ticket 77429)
• Remove duplicate title information (part name and number) when showing Marc Records. (Ticket 77951)
• Change Searchbox from a text area to an input box. (Ticket 77978)
• Update Cloud Library Integration to handle patron barcodes with spaces in them. (Ticket 78099)
• Restore old functionality to filter administration pages from the top of the table for Libraries and Locations. Also default Libraries and Locations to showing 250 records per page by default. (Ticket 78210)
• Update the display of Browse categories so that lists can be shown within Browse Categories. (Ticket 78268)
• Fix so Grid mode works again while browsing the catalog. (Ticket 78281)
• Update Masquerade to stop checking account profiles as soon as a matching user is found. (Ticket 78283)
• Correct filtering of Materials Request Page for formats and Assignee. (Ticket 78374)
• Fix so that links shown in the menubar without a dropdown menu respect the open in new tab setting. (Ticket 78437)
• Provide additional padding around the Show Editions button. (Ticket 78443)
• Updates for PayPal Integration to pass order id. (Ticket 78498)
• Remove incorrect header colors from panels within the full record display. This allows them to respect theme colors properly. (Ticket 78705)
• When changing page size, make sure to reset the user to the first page. (Ticket 78736)
• When navigating through search results, properly handle cases where a record has no title when showing next and previous links.
• When Koha maxreserves is set to the default (empty), substitute the default value of 50 when placing holds.
• Remove time limits when loading building suggestions.
• Wrap spelling suggestions buttons.
• Fix display of who submitted a review.