News

We have completed the processing of the 2021 NCOA address verification. In mid December, 2021, 970,826 patron records were sent for processing through the National Change of Address (NCOA). This process returned 107,427 or 11% with a changed address. Please review your next steps in reviewing these records on our National Change of Address (NCOA) support page. We ask libraries to review these...

Dear Libraries, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Please submit topics for the upcoming year! DVD BOXSETS When patrons place holds on boxsets (especially TV series) they expect to receive the entire season, not disc 1 or any single disc. So, it’s worth the reminder that DVD Boxsets circulate with one barcode. This policy saves an enormous amount of time for everyone and ensures happy...

You may have recently received a message about an offer from OCLC to update WorldCat holdings using an export of MARC bibliographic data. This message may have come from OCLC or been forwarded from the Illinois State Library. We ask that you do not accept this offer. SWAN has a system in place to update holdings on behalf of our membership, and we are unsure how this process will mingle with our...

The January 2022 (October- December) Quarterly Billing is complete, and the invoices and checks will be mailed shortly. Documentation is available to help guide member library staff through the Billing Summary sheet as well as the detail statement reports folder accessible in BlueCloud Analytics Shared Reports. Library Directors have been provided with BCA login credentials. If you are a Director...

Thanks to everyone who attended the PayPal & Aspen Fines Payment Information Session today. As a reminder please complete the configuration form so we can set up your online fines payment in Aspen. SWAN will start configuring PayPal in Aspen on a rolling basis beginning February 1st. The session recording is also available for you to review. If you have any questions, please email the SWAN...

The Aspen 22.01 release is live. This release includes the following SWAN member requests: Use 590 field a fallback to assign formats Improved color contrast validation Improvements to search results for search terms ending in a "?" Tomorrow (1/13), after the overnight processes run, you will see format facet improvements for library-of-things records. View the 22.01 release notes.

On Friday, January 7, 2022 we got news that the National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan Act grant SWAN submitted was not selected. This grant would have provided SWAN libraries an opportunity to use a fully licensed Beanstack reading challenge software platform. Currently more than 48 of our public libraries are using Beanstack. We will be including a shared license to Beanstack for...

All libraries that are not yet live on Aspen should complete the Aspen Configuration form by January 31st. Complete form Kickoff meeting recording and slides If you were unable to attend the Aspen Cohort 2 Kickoff Meeting, you can view the recording and slides, which include more information about the configuration options available to you. In addition, they cover a helpful "to do" list for your...

We realize some of the SWAN libraries are dealing with staff shortages due to the pandemic and may need to close temporarily. We can assist you with updating your banner to indicate your closing, extending due dates, and indicating your status on the Library Services Status page. Please submit a Library Status Update Form if: Your library is temporarily closing You want your due dates extended due...

We have received the address change data from Unique and will be updating patron records in January, 2022. The number of patron records sent for processing was 970,826. Of those, 107,427 were returned with address changes for a change rate of 11%. In addition to the new addresses for our patrons, we received geographic/census information on all records sent for processing. This data will be...

Aspen and OverDrive changed the checkout process in My Account. Patrons are now redirected to an OverDrive fulfillment screen to select a downloadable format or to read online. Please submit a ticket if you have questions or find issues with the new process to the SWAN ticketing system.

ProQuest has not extended the remote access for Ancestry Library Edition. The access URL on your website should be reverted back to http://ancestrylibrary.proquest.com

We have identified approximately 6,000 checked out items with due dates of 1/1/2022; we've updated these to 1/3/2022. This issue occurred because many libraries had not updated their Days Closed Calendars with 2022 closed dates. Documentation for updating your Days Closed calendar is available on the SWAN Support Site. Please be sure to check these dates periodically to ensure all of your library...

The 21.15 release of Aspen will go live in production overnight on December 7th. This release includes several priority requests from SWAN as well as changes to browse categories. To-Dos If you have customized your browse categories and use sub-categories, you may need to update your parent categories. If you use the default SWAN created categories, you do not need to do anything. Browse category...

Do you have archives that you would like to digitize? Do any historical societies in your area have archives to digitize? Are you interested in starting any community driven archives programs? Do you already have digital archives that you would like to make more widely available through Aspen, the Illinois Digital Heritage Hub, and the Digital Public Library of America? If you answered yes to any...

Your Aspen Administration logins are now available! Directors Directors should make sure you can access these through the accounts and logins for your library. SWAN will cover the different logins and what they do in the Aspen Cohort 2 Kickoff meeting on January 10th. Be sure at least one person from your library is registered for that meeting. If you want to distribute the administration logins...

We are ready to submit patron records for National Change of Address (NCOA) processing in December 2021. Any remaining records from NCOA 2018 that have not been updated (NCOA 2018 note removed) will be excluded from the NCOA 2021 processing. Throughout SWAN, we have approximately 2,500 patron records remaining. Review the following report which is paged by library to see a list of these patrons...

SirsiDynix and Overdrive have made changes to the checkout process in Enterprise and BLUEcloud Mobile for Overdrive downloads. Patrons are now redirected to an Overdrive screen to complete the checkout. Aspen is not affected. We're aware of issues with the checkout process that include: "Open Content" popups do not consistently work. Clicking "Download" too many times from My Account will result...

If your library participated in Cohort 1 of the Aspen rollout, we'd like to hear how it went for you. Fill out the survey by December 7th. Your feedback will help SWAN staff prepare and improve the rollout for Cohort 2. Thank you in advance for your insights, they will help make the process even smoother for your colleagues. Fill out the survey

SirsiDynix will be performing planned maintenance of the Enterprise catalog server on Wednesday, November 10th 2021 at 11:15 p.m., which will require downtime throughout the process. The maintenance is expected to take no longer than an hour, so the impact will be minimal. Unless complications arise, no further communication will be issued for this outage.