Aspen Discovery

Aspen Discovery Announces November 2019 Release

by Jessie Zairo on Dec 2, 2019

Aspen Discovery announced this week that the November 2019 release is available. This major release includes 6 new features, 8 search improvements, 3 translation improvements and 8 bugfixes.

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

The new functionality in this release is a direct response to the needs of our partners and we had a great time working with them to refine and enrich both PayPal integration and Website searching to best meet the needs of their patrons.

Release Notes

New features

  • PayPal integration
    • Allow libraries to use PayPal to pay fines
    • Library can allow the user to pay all fines, selected fines, or pay fines partially
    • Library can set a minimum amount that the patron must pay
    • Library can set the order fines must be paid in
    • Fine payment is recorded within both Aspen Discovery and the ILS
  • Website indexing
    • Websites can be selected for indexing and display as their own search type and within the Explore More bar
    • Website searching includes a dashboard with usage tracking
  • Placards
    • Placards can be defined and shown within search results based on keywords defined by the library
  • Google Images can be used as a source of images within Aspen Discovery. Images can be matched by ISBN and/or Title/Author.
  • Dashboards contain statistics for the previous month and look better when large numbers are displayed
  • Display call numbers and volume information on checkouts of ILS materials when available

Search improvements

  • Improved processing of advanced search when displayed as a basic search
  • Better handling of UTF searching and the ability to ignore diacritics as appropriate
  • Improve functionality for search term replacements
  • Display error page on search errors for Catalog and List searches
  • Error pages will link to Keyword results if there are results
  • Improve handling of invalid search sources
  • Improve handling for cases where the search index is not valid for the selected search source
  • Better handle cases where the user is searching for a url

Translation Improvements

  • Translation interface can be filtered by the original term as well as the translation
  • Translations that have already been completed can be shown
  • Translations are paginated

Bug fixes

  • Properly handle translation maps using regular expressions
  • Properly disable hoopla checkout prompt if the user does not want to be prompted
  • Show checkout prompt properly with linked users
  • Increase the range of OverDrive publication date handling
  • Provide better error messages to the user in a number of cases when they have been logged out.
  • Fixed returning Hoopla checkouts
  • RBdigital titles that have been removed from the collection display as unavailable
  • Covers from RBdigital can be reloaded

System updates

  • Creation of new demo instances at aspen-model.bywatersolutions.com and aspen-model2.bywatersolutions.com
  • Updates to cron and background processes
  • Settings shown are controlled with the modules system to make the administration interface cleaner when all functionality is not in use
  • Automatically check for cases when more than one instance of a background process is running
  • Automatically restart background processes if they fail
  • Improve memory usage for all background indexing process
  • User List Indexing runs continuously by default now
  • Hoopla runs once a day and then exits to improve memory usage
  • Improvements to make new instances easier to install
  • Remove unused settings from config.ini file
  • Background processes prompt for the server name to run if it is not provided on the command line.

About Aspen Discovery

Aspen is a full-featured Discovery System that integrates with e-content and other 3rd party providers, giving your patrons comprehensive access to all of your materials in one place. Aspen combines your library catalog with e-content, digital archives and enrichment from all major third party providers, improves relevancy and ease of use, provides native reading recommendations, displays all formats of titles within one result (FRBR) and much more. Aspen was created to give users an improved experience over other Discovery systems with less of an impact on library budgets. For more information about Aspen please visit: https://bywatersolutions.com/projects/aspen-discovery

About ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions is a full service, high quality Open Source support and implementation company dedicated to providing libraries with a lower cost, more advanced level of support for their systems than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in first rate implementation and support services with library systems of all sizes for the Koha ILS, Aspen Discovery, Folio LSP, Coral ERM, and Libki PC Management.

Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions not only lowers the cost of implementation and maintenance of OSS, but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit: https://bywatersolutions.com.

For More Information

Jessica Zairo
Marketing & Outreach Coordinator
ByWater Solutions
bywatersolutions.com
Phone:(888)900-8944

Read more by Jessie Zairo

Tags Release, November