Aspen Discovery

Aspen Discovery 22.03.00 Release Notes

by Mark Noble on Mar 9, 2022

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the 22.03.00 release is now available.

See the Release Summary here.

Jordan Fields, Aspen Product Librarian, recently commented on the release:

We're really excited about our updates for Aspen LiDA this release, especially how great Linked Accounts in the app will be for our patrons with families or multiple accounts. We're also releasing a number of tools for library staff to use to help make Aspen better, including a search and relevancy testing tool, and the ability for Aspen administrators to rank their most important development requests directly in the staff side of Aspen Discovery!"

Account Updates

  • Add a new setting to allow Reading History to be disabled.
    • New setting:
      • Primary Configuration > Library Systems > ILS/Account Integration > Enable Reading History
  • Add a new setting to allow Saved Searches to be disabled.
    • New setting:
      • Primary Configuration > Library Systems > ILS/Account Integration > Enable Saved Searches
  • Make PIN parameters configurable including the minimum and maximum length and if only digits are allowed.
    • New settings:
      • Primary Configuration > Library Systems > ILS/Account Integration > PIN / Password > Minimum PIN Length
      • Primary Configuration > Library Systems > ILS/Account Integration > PIN / Password > Maximum PIN Length
      • Primary Configuration > Library Systems > ILS/Account Integration > PIN / Password > Only digits allowed in PIN

Aspen LiDA Updates

  • On the Item Details screen, there's now an option to see the copy information similar to Aspen Discovery.
  • Fixed an issue with single branch libraries and placing ILS holds that resolved in a "400 Error".
  • Patrons can now view, add, and remove linked accounts.
  • Patrons can now view holds and checkouts from linked accounts.
  • The Account screen has been re-designed as a drawer to access account details.
  • Fetching updated data should happen a bit more frequently in the background while using the app.
  • On the Contact screen, patrons will now see the name of the library that they're logged into.

Evergreen Updates

  • Add module for Evergreen
  • Automatically load libraries and locations using the OpenSRF APIs.
  • Place bib level holds within Aspen.
  • Cancel holds within Aspen.
  • Freeze and thaw holds within Aspen.
  • Change pickup locations for holds within Aspen.
  • Load account summary for Evergreen.
  • Display current checkouts within Aspen.
  • Renew checkouts within Aspen.
  • Show Evergreen fines within Aspen.
  • Allow indexing Evergreen bibs and items based on MARC exports.

FOLIO Updates

  • Add module for FOLIO

Grouped Work Display

  • Updated 'Show Staff View' within Grouped Work Display Settings to add a third state of Show for staff only. With this setting, only staff users (users with a Role assigned in Aspen or where the PType is marked as Treat As Staff) will be shown staff view when viewing the full record page.
  • The label for "Appears on List" will now be properly aligned with the surrounding labels.
  • Allow Citation Style Guides to be disabled by library
    • New Setting:
      • Primary Configuration > Library Systems > Catalog Enrichment > Show Style Guides

Koha Updates

  • When authenticating with Koha, use a POST request rather than GET request.

Materials Request

  • Correct un-assigning a staff member from a request and handle changing status when no staff member is assigned.
  • Translation updates.

OverDrive Updates

  • Make buttons for displaying OverDrive Previews translatable.
  • Do not show eAudio books as eComics.

Polaris Updates

  • Update Polaris indexing to mark Library Use Only titles as available.
  • Update saving account settings to not try to update phone and notice settings if they are disabled by the library.
  • Allow Polaris holds to be suspended until a specific date.

Search Updates

  • Performance updates for advanced searching
  • Make additional searches case-insensitive.
  • When doing quoted text searches ensure that the entire string is quoted and that there is only one set of quotations.
  • Updates to better handle possessive searches
  • Updates for handling of stop words in some searches.
  • Correct showing formats that contain a + symbol when the format is selected (i.e. Book + CD and Book + DVD)
  • Add a new interface to test searches and search relevancy. Terms can be entered for testing with a list of grouped work ids that should be found or that should be excluded.

Sierra Updates

  • Updates when converting from dollars to cents when recording fine payments.

Support Updates

  • Allow connection to a ticketing system.
  • Display a list of all active tickets for a library.
  • Allow libraries to set development priorities for their outstanding tickets.

Symphony Updates

  • When placing holds and loading holds, checkouts, and reading history handle bib id's starting with u.
  • When placing a hold, use the physical location of the catalog, or the pickup location as the location where the hold was placed.
  • When loading fines, check to see if the fine total does not match the account summary and if so, clear the account summary.

User List Updates

  • When displaying user lists, do not allow lists to be emailed if Show Email This is disabled within Full Record settings for the library.

Other Updates

  • The getPatronProfile method in the User API will now properly return card expiration data.
  • Only open new tab when accessing a web resource that is set to open in a new window.
  • Make messages when freezing, thawing, and cancelling multiple holds translatable.
  • Required fields in the Aspen Materials Request system now have a label.
  • When indexing titles, check for titles longer than 750 characters and properly truncate them.
  • When generating coordinates in Location Settings, Aspen will ignore the # symbol which was causing an incomplete request to Google Maps API.
  • Correct breadcrumb for ratings page.
  • When loading Aspen, handle cases where the default library is not set properly.
  • Increase the length of the display name field for library settings.
  • Increase the length of the regular expression to validate zip codes.
  • Do not time out when exporting translations.
  • Allow properties with a type of text area to be displayed in a list of objects.
  • Enable Rewrite Engine by default in apache config to make it easier to add rewrites.
  • When displaying permissions for a role, automatically open any sections that have selected permissions.
  • Create scripts for moving files between servers.
  • Force a nightly index at the end of running Database Maintenance.

Watch the 22.03 Aspen Updates in an Instant Recording

Watch a short highlight video of the some of the new features available in 22.03.00

Read more by Mark Noble

Tags release notes, Release