With Aspen having a format filter for Manga, our goal is for this popular material type to be much more easily browsed in the public catalog. While reviewing this format, we found that many items within the same series were assigned different formats, some Manga and many Graphic novel. Aspen is coded to assign the format of Manga if the bib record in WorkFlows contains a 655 genre heading that contains the word "Manga." The genre heading "Manga" was only approved as an authorized heading in 2022, with a few other sub genres receiving an authorized status in 2023 and 2024. Due to these headings not being used widely while a majority of our Manga collections were cataloged, we performed a cleanup project to make this format filter work as expected for patrons and staff alike.
Before the project began, the number of bib records with the Manga format assigned in Aspen was 5,522. After the project, the total number is 12,639. While we believe we got a majority of these items, but please send in a ticket if you come across a record that is not assigned the correct format in Aspen.