News

Mark your calendars! Our Aspen instance is migrating to a new server to provide better performance and stability for our catalog. The catalog will be in maintenance mode from 7 p.m. Sunday, January 15th until the migration is complete Monday, January 16th. We anticipate the migration should be complete by 11 a.m. During this time, the catalog will still be available to search, but My Account...

The changes for our National Change of Address run for 2022 are complete. As of tomorrow, January 7, 2023, the Symphony function to update Last Activity Date when a patron's address information is changed, will be re-enabled. Final counts of updates: 38,364 recorded address changes 4,860 of those patrons were inactive (LAD before 1/1/2021) and moved out of state 1,497 of those patrons moved out of...

We have received the address change data from Unique and will be updating patron records starting on January 3rd. The number of patron records sent for processing was 939,395. Of those, 38,364 were returned with address changes for a change rate of 4%. In preparation, on December 30th, we will temporarily disable the Symphony function to update Last Activity Date when a patron's address...

The SWAN service area is under a winter storm watch. We want to remind libraries of the following in case your library makes a decision to close due to the storm. Catalog Alerts You can create System Message page banners to inform patrons of news and alerts in the Aspen Catalog. See our how to page Reporting closings SWAN does not need to be notified of temporary weather closures. You can view and...

SWAN Support is limited over the holidays with on-call staff available for emergencies. Friday, December 23rd CLOSED Monday, December 26th CLOSED Friday, December 30th CLOSED Monday, January 2nd CLOSED When to Call 844-792-6542 (844-SWAN-LIB): A service is down Circulation is impacted Unable to perform key job functions When to Open a Ticket: Questions and troubleshooting Report request Enterprise...

The Courses on the Learning Management System have now been updated. This update is part of our annual review, to ensure that we have accurate information in our courses. If you are enrolled in a course and have not yet finished, you will be prompted to start the course from the beginning. This process included the following: Updating content, as needed (e.g., references to our online catalog, now...

The SWAN Membership on December 1st approved the addition of a new service that will be provided to all member libraries, and that service is to enhance all notifications sent via SWAN to library users with the MessageBee service provided through Unique Management. The service we envision for libraries would be to provide access to each library to have the ability to customize areas of the HTML...

The Aspen 22.12 release is now live. Highlights for this release include: Preferred name settings Users can now set their preferred name settings under My Account > Contact Information. The preferred name will appear in Aspen, as well as in the Preferred Name field in Symphony. Currently, Aspen does not yet update the setting in Symphony Workflows to display the preferred name in the Name field...

SirsiDynix has completed the BLUEcloud Analytics URL changes for North American clusters (noam). This basically means that our login page for BLUEcloud Analytics has changed to: https://noam-bca-2.bc.sirsidynix.net/bcanalytics/asp/Main.aspx If you have saved links or shared links to reports, the URL to access those has also changed. There will be no automatic redirect to the new URL. However, the...

Baker & Taylor is experiencing an outage that is impacting services. SWAN has responded by disabling and disconnecting library services for the following: Axis 360 - down & Aspen circulation unavailable eResource Central integration with BLUEcloud Mobile - disabled by SirsiDynix Support SIP2 & Z39.50 access - disabled by SWAN B&T support portal - down TitleSource 360 - down EDI File Retrieval -...

The Aspen 22.11 release is now live. Highlights for this release include: Export to Excel improvements You can now export lists to Excel, which several SWAN member libraries have requested. The export to Excel features for search results and purchase suggestions have also been enhanced, including previously missing fields. Search result interface change Call number now displays in a column with...

Kanopy PLUS (Public Library Unlimited Subscriptions) provides unlimited, simultaneous viewing of curated titles per pack. Current and new Kanopy subscribers can take advantage of 20% when buying 2 or more subscription packs. The PLUS packs work differently than the Pay Per Use program. There is an upfront fee and does not use credits. If you currently do not have Kanopy, and are interested, the...

As we prepare for 2022 National Change of Address record submission we will be removing any patron records remaining from the 2018 NCOA run which have not been updated. Since 2018 these patrons have been blocked from check-outs, so the accounts have been inactive for nearly 4 years at this point. Removal of these inactive records (status = BADADDRES) will occur on November 17, 2022. The parameters...

SWAN will begin removing Fiscal Cycle 2020 from Symphony on November 17, 2022. Be sure to compile any order, vendor, or fund information you may need with this fiscal cycle before then. Please open a ticket if you need any assistance.

Dear Libraries, Happy Fall! It’s hard to believe this is the last newsletter of the year. I would like to point out a few housecleaning things that have caught our attention lately, this way we transition smoothly into 2023. 1) Vendor records missing the 590 tag: This usually happens when items are ordered using a regular book cart, rather than large print or audiobook, for example, so the wrong...

The Aspen 22.10 release is now live. This release includes the following: Additional formats This release added several new formats that had been on the SWAN priority list and enhanced the detection of others. These formats will display in search results and search filters. 4k Blu-ray Playaway Launchpad Playaway Bookpack Playaway Wonderbook Playaway View Vox Book Nintendo Switch GameCube Pop-Up...

The October 2022 (July- September) 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...

SWAN created BLUEcloud Analytics accounts for each member library to help manage subscriptions, reports, and collaboration in your library. We asked library staff using a personal account to add saved reports and subscriptions to the shared library account. The deadline for this is December 31, 2022; all personal logins will be removed after that date. We added the following Sunsetting BLUEcloud...

SWAN is exploring interest in additional user groups for library members for 2023. SWAN user groups are member-led networking opportunities for you to share ideas and solutions. Each user group requires a chair or co-chairs from member libraries. Chairs are responsible for soliciting discussion items from your group, preparing meeting agenda, and facilitating meetings. SWAN staff will help support...

Update 10/31/2022: OverDrive has completed the conversion of the MediaOnDemand collection. We will be verifying everyone's parameters and addressing any outliers. Update 10/6/2022: Our representative from Hoopla has confirmed that they have migrated all Hoopla subscribers to the new encrypted port. OverDrive is currently working on the Media on Demand libraries as well. Library Market had also...