News

If your library wants to get started with Beanstack now, see the document (below) with base pricing for Beanstack Plus, as well as an overview of the service. Through September 30, 2021, an immediate 15% discount is extended to new SWAN libraries joining. You can reach out directly to Lindsey Hill, Director of Library & Corporate Accounts at Zoobean ( lindsey@zoobean.com). Be sure to let Lindsey...

To protect patron privacy, a list of the records eligible for removal is accessible from your BLUEcloud Analytics library account (e.g. SWANLIBSXYZ). An email is scheduled to arrive in the library's general mailbox (xyz@notices.swanlibraries.net) every 2nd of the month. It will contain a link to the History List report in BLUEcloud Analytics. SWAN public libraries received their monthly review of...

The Cataloging Users meeting will take place via GoToMeeting on Thursday, October 7th, from 9:30 to 12:00. It will depend on the agenda if the meeting will last 2.5 hrs ; however, I will be available for the full duration if need be. Please submit topic ideas for the agenda or questions to claudia@swanlibraries.net. We will send out the agenda a week before the meeting. Please note you will also...

Nearly half of our SWAN public libraries are using Beanstack to promote and track reading programs. The folks as Zoobean are offering extended discounts to SWAN libraries based on participation levels. Working with their team, SWAN staff will provide additional support to our member libraries in training, deployment, and tracking with Beanstack. Beanstack staff will lead two quick 30-minute demo...

I hope everyone is having a lovely Summer! Here are just a few updates on cataloging, pre-cats and what’s coming. Aspen catalog & pre-cats With the implementation of the Aspen catalog in October, we may need to fine-tune pre-cats. This may mean changes to minimum standards such as the appropriate foreign language code in the fixed field for foreign language materials. This will give libraries the...

The 21.11 release for Aspen Discovery is live on our production instance. This was a shorter release cycle, which included changes to the display of the My Account page and improvements to language translation features. View the full 21.11 release notes.

If your library is in the second cohort for the Aspen rollout and training, please save the following dates. We look forward to working with you in 2022! Cohort 2 libraries Beecher Community Library District Bellwood Public Library Berwyn Public Library Bloomingdale Public Library Broadview Public Library District Brookfield Public Library Calumet Park Public Library Calumet City Public Library...

Weeklies 2022 The Weeklies 2022 list has been posted to the support site. The serial controls can be transferred to the new records once 2021 issues are no longer expected. See Transferring a Control Record. Quick reminders: Weeklies use Chronology only, except for the academic journals JAMA and The New England Journal of Medicine. Do not attach the Consumer Reports Buying Guide to the Consumer...

We have upgraded our Aspen Discovery instance to the 21.10 release. View the full 21.10 release notes. Highlights ProPay integration Initial development on the ProPay integration for fines payment is complete. Additional testing and configuration are needed before we can make fines payment available in the live Aspen catalogs, but it is getting close! Better handling of items checked out to...

The Aspen rollout is fast approaching! These are your library's cohort assignments. For the libraries that selected "no preference," we assigned you to Cohort 1. For any libraries that do not respond, we put you in Cohort 2. Thanks to everyone who has signed up! For those of you in Cohort 1, we look forward to seeing you at the kickoff meeting August 30th - please register on L2. Cohort 1 Acorn...

SirsiDynix will be performing planned maintenance on the Enterprise catalog server on Tuesday, August 10th at 11:00 p.m. This maintenance will require intermittent downtime throughout the process and is expected to take no longer than an hour. We'll be posting a banner to Enterprise to alert patrons. Unless complications arise, no further communication will be issued for this outage.

We are pleased to share the news that Maywood Public Library District will be reopening on Monday August 9. Their announcement that includes their hours and temporary fine free status can be found on their website. They will be rejoining SWAN Resource Sharing when they open. As we adjust their settings in Symphony WorkFlows you may see items being routed to MWS to fulfill holds. Follow the...

If your library is planning to participate in the first cohort of Aspen trainings, you can now register in L2 for the kickoff meeting, office hours, and Aspen Admin training sessions. Note: the Aspen Admin trainings for Purchase Suggestions and Record Grouping have changed, so please update your calendars if you plan to attend those sessions. If you haven't already, sign up for your cohort by...

Following the completion of last week's upgrade to the Symphony server, the deadline for the associated WorkFlows 3.7.1 client update is Monday, August 30th. If you’re unfamiliar with the WorkFlows client update process, please refer to the three steps detailed in Software Downloads & Setup page. After completing the client update on all WorkFlows computers in your library, please submit one...

Are you aware of how people with disabilities use the library catalog and library web apps? Please join SWAN and Deque on September 21st via Zoom to learn about web accessibility. In this one-hour webinar, you will learn how web accessibility is defined, what inclusive design looks like, and how to ask vendors about the accessibility of the products you purchase for your library collections. The...

As shared in our Fireside Chats and in previous communication, we will be removing all bills for patrons with a last activity date before January 1, 2011 and less that $100 in total bills. This represents 10+ years of inactivity. These patrons have not used library services requiring use of their library card even years before we migrated to SirsiDynix Symphony. Since the system will not allow...

The SWAN Aspen Discovery catalogs will be upgraded to version 21.09 this evening. There will be no downtime and all Aspen functions will work normally. However, you may see some discrepancies in availability on Tuesday, August 3rd as this upgrade will impact our overnight Aspen indexes. Aspen upgrades will not affect Enterprise access. Highlights for this release include: Performance enhancements...

Aspen is coming! Sign up for your go-live dates and training. Please sign up by Monday, August 23rd. Sign up Libraries in the first cohort will be ready to go-live on Aspen at the end of October 2021. Through September and October, SWAN staff will provide an Aspen training series and regular office hours to help you configure your catalogs and prepare to support patrons. Libraries in the second...

On July 28th, SWAN hosted a panel discussion on auditing collections for diversity. The goal of the session was to share the experiences of Illinois libraries performing these audits and give an opportunity to learn from each other. The session lasted two hours, and a recording is available on the support site for anyone interested: Panel Discussion: Diversity Audits We are happy with how this...

Kanopy is offering a discount based on the amount SWAN libraries new to Kanopy commit to spending in one year. The start date for the discount is September 1, 2021. Discount details All libraries that subscribe to Kanopy will receive the discount but only new Kanopy subscribers will count toward the commitment. The commitment amount is an estimate. Because two libraries added Kanopy in July 2021...