Aspen Discovery 21.13.00 Release Notes

by Mark Noble on Oct 13, 2021

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the 21.13.00 release is now available. See the Release Summary here.

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

In this release we focused on addressing our partner's most common requests. In total, we addressed over 60 requests and enhancements to make Aspen even easier to use for both library patrons and staff."

App Updates

• Updated the overall user interface and several screen flows
• Added support for storing library theme data to fetch when customizing the app later on
• Added app access to Search API and Item API
• Updated the Library API to check if a library location has the homeLink set to "default" and instead pull the system homeLink
• Added favicon to Library API
• Updated how the concatenation of format and collection code formed to check that both variables exist
• Checkouts and holds now have unique IDs to prevent display issues
• Checkouts and holds now display format
• Added pagination support for search results
• Updated the formatting of due dates the Checkouts screen and "Ready for pickup until" dates on the Holds screen

Grouping Updates

• Increase the maximum length of a title when grouping to 200 characters rather than 100.
• When grouping look at the 264 in addition to the 260.
• When determining format by item information, use the format defined within the indexing profile while grouping.
• When regrouping records, reindex the records in real time rather than waiting for all records to finish regrouping.

Indexing Updates

• Correct processing of the Additional Locations to Show Availability For setting within library and location settings so additional locations can be shown in the Available At Facet.
• Increase the length of the Non Holdable ITypes field within Indexing Profiles
• Updates for handling unknown and missing languages and audiences while indexing grouped works.
• Additional audience determination for Hoopla comics.
• Improve the speed of indexing records within Aspen.

Koha Integration Updates

• Make sure that correctly formatted dates are being sent to Koha API.
• If a patron field is unwanted during self-modification, but required during self-registration, ensure that it only appears when self-registering.
• When extracting book covers from Koha add a check for invalid timestamps in the database.

OverDrive Indexing Updates

• Update calculation of number of titles owned by members of a consortia when advantage titles have been promoted to the consortial collection.
• When indexing eContent include Overdrive within the Available At Facet for both Advantage and traditional collections.
• Update the display of copies within search results and full record pages to be clearer and more concise.
• Update the display of Always Available titles to show that they are always available even if patrons have holds on them.

Placard Changes

• Allow administrators to define alt text for images.

Polaris Indexing Updates

• Update indexing to store the item identifier for each item within MARC data on export from Polaris.
• Show patron renew blocks within the patron's account.
• Update indexing to look at deleted items within Polaris to ensure they are deleted even if the bib has not changed when the item is updated.
• Update indexing to index marc records where the bib id has been changed (typically when merging records)
• Update indexing to look at deleted items within Polaris to ensure they are deleted even if the bib has not changed when the item is updated.
• Updates for placing volume level holds within Polaris to ensure item barcode is sent in the hold request.

Sideload Updates

• Allow the text of the Access Online button for Sideloaded records to be customized.
• Allow the status of Sideloaded records to be hidden for cases when Available Online is not appropriate.

Web Builder Updates

• TinyMCE will stop filtering out permitted HTML tags.
• Category/Audience panel heading will now properly inherit the Open Panel Text Color on the Web Resource page.

Other Changes

• In System Variables if Allowable HTML Tags is empty, it will now properly allow all HTML through.
• Correctly show User display name within linked accounts even for patrons that have not logged in before.
• Fix showing quick copy view when a format contains an apostrophe.
• Add a new Image Regular Expression to use when loading images from an Open Archives site.
• Make materials request email subject translatable.
• Added some extra padding under the description container on the Web Resource page.
• Improve labels for website indexing regular expressions to extract page title and description.
• Remove vufind reference.
• When sharing to Pinterest, use the large image for a title.
• Add ids to each element of the self registration response so individual elements can be hidden with css.
• Add support for extended UTF-8 character sets (4 byte support) within the database.
• Correct service name for cloudLibrary within Aspen.
• Updates for loading default values when adding new objects (settings, placards,etc) to Aspen.
• Add Publication Date Asc, Publication Date Desc, and Number of Holds to the list of available sorts for Browse Categories.
• Properly set hold ratios for records for sorting.
• Include New York Times list updates within System status checks.

Watch the 21.13 Aspen Updates in an Instant Recording

Watch a short highlight video of the some of the new features available in 21.13.