Aspen Discovery 21.11.00 Release Notes

by Mark Noble on Sep 3, 2021

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the 21.11.00 release is now available. See the Release Summary here.

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

With this release we're thrilled to help our libraries develop a community translation system that all Aspen libraries can participate in to better serve patrons where English is not their primary language."

Account Updates

• Patron Account page will now include counts for numbers of titles checked out, overdue, on hold, and ready for pickup with a spotlight showing recommendations for the patron.

• The display of a patron's library card can now optionally include the expiration date for the library card. A new setting in Library account settings controls if the expiration date shows or not.
• After a fine payment is made, ensure the account summary is cleared.

Axis 360

• Fix display of subjects when viewing an Axis 360 record.

Browse Updates

• When a patron is not logged in, ensure the "Recommended For You" Browse Category is disabled for libraries that have an empty Browse Category Group causing all categories to show.

Koha Updates

• Add new messaging settings including ILL Ready, ILL Unavailable, and Auto Renewals.
• Correct loading cover images in 21.05 and later.
• Correct updating hold locations for Koha 21.05 and later.

Materials Request Updates

• For Yes/No fields on the request form, do not default to a specific value.
• Add a new Staff comments field that is visible to staff only.
• Make all materials request fields translatable including:
  • Title/Author
  • Staff View of a request
  • Submission summary information

Permissions Updates

• Move configuration of a library's home link to need Library Contact Settings permissions.

Polaris Updates

• Allow PINS to be from 4-14 characters with numbers and letters when resetting PINs.
• Correct flow when placing a hold that requires confirmation when the hold pickup location is preselected.
• Correct indexing when volume fields exist, but there is no barcode on an item field.
• Updates for loading account summary for Polaris Patrons using username login when masquerading.

Search and Indexing Updates

• When determining literary form, give additional weight to the 008 field compared to subject fields.
• When determining literary form by the MARC 008 field, properly check that the literary form bit is present.
• When loading Accelerated Reader on a multi-tenant system, only require the file to be fetched for a single instance.

Sierra Updates

• Correct the display of volumes when a record has both volumes with no items and items without a volume assigned.
• When loading reading history from Sierra, default titles to having been returned.

Translation Updates

• Translation Terms are now categorized according to if they are public facing, admin facing, metadata, and/or admin entered data to make it easier to do targeted translations.
• Translations can now be stored in a central location for easy distribution of library generated translations.
• Make all text within Aspen translatable.

Other Updates

• Images will now respect the alignment rules set to the text or container, i.e. centering properly.
• Shelf status indicators will now properly wrap if needed with translations.
• When the Select Interface page is displayed, any libraries that have Create Search Interface turned off will not show.
• Allow the Select Interface page to include locations and add a new option for which libraries and locations show.
• Allow statuses to wrap within the display.
• Remove unused Islandora integrations.
• Correct showing Events indexing notes.
• Remove old OverDrive support form.

Watch the 21.11 Aspen Updates in an Instant Recording

Watch a short highlight video of the some of the new features available in 21.11.