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NOBLE to move to Aspen Discovery System

Aspen, Catalog, Executive Director's Report

NOBLE patrons, students, and users will soon have a new way to access materials in NOBLE libraries and to manage their Evergreen accounts.

NOBLE members voted in January to approve a move to the Aspen Discovery System, which will replace the NOBLE public catalog to provide patron access to NOBLE libraries’ collections. The Evergreen staff client will continue to use the native Evergreen staff catalog.

NOBLE will join three other Massachusetts networks – CW MARS, CLAMS and Minuteman – that have already implemented Aspen. The discovery system will provide a more modern and dynamic entry point to our collections with a speedy search and tools to allow libraries to better highlight their collections.

We are still working out details with our support vendor, including a timeline, but we expect the implementation to happen this spring. We will be offering an introductory Aspen session in our upcoming workshop schedule and will schedule more in-depth workshops once a timeline is set.

In the meantime, if you want to take a peek at how Aspen works for other networks, I encourage you to visit the other Massachusetts Aspen implementations:

Much more information will be forthcoming. Feel free to let us know if you have questions.

Annual Holds Session Recording and Links

Holds

Last Thursday we held our Annual Holds Session, where we discussed some new things related to holds, including MessageBee, Holds Cancellation and holds in Aspen, and reviewed Staff and Patron Placed Holds, the Holds Pull List, Managing the Hold Shelf, Hopeless Holds and more.

Here is the agenda for the session (with links to individual presentations), the screencast of the session, and direct links to each set of slides that were presented.

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Agenda | Recording
Slides: MessageBee | Holds Cancellation Notices | Holds in Aspen | Placing Holds in the Staff Client | Patron Hold Options in the Staff Client | Holds Pull List | Privacy Waiver | Managing the Holds Shelf | Hopeless Holds | NOBLE Dashboard | ComCat Flow Chart

And here are links to two upcoming sessions that were mentioned at the session and that also relate to aspects of Holds:

  • NOBLE Dashboard,Thursday, February 27, 10 – 11 AM, Online via Zoom — Take a tour with NOBLE Systems Manager Martha Driscoll through all the different information you can find on the Dashboard, including daily and monthly circulation and holds statistics, collection statistics including monthly statistics for the number of items owned, added and removed from each shelving location, monthly counts of patrons for your library, monthly OverDrive statistics and much more. Registration
  • ComCat Roundtable, Tuesday, April 15, 10 – 11 AM, Hybrid, join us at NOBLE or participate via Zoom — If you work with any aspect of the Commonwealth Catalog, either helping patrons identify and request material from other systems or managing the flow of items in and out of your library, we hope you’ll join us at this ComCat Roundtable and share your tips on how to get the most out of this statewide resource. Registration

NOBLE Training Schedule: January – June 2025

Uncategorized

Here’s the NOBLE training schedule through June: NOBLE Training Schedule: January – June 2025. This includes roundtables, presentations and other sessions, offered via Zoom, hybrid or in person. That document includes descriptions and registration links, but these events are also all on the Staff Information System calendar (see the calendar link in the navigation bar at the top of the screen) and you can click through to see the descriptions and registration links. The meeting tool also has a list of meeting with registration links : Upcoming Meetings.

Nice to meet you, NOBLE!

Uncategorized
My name is Chris Amorosi and I am starting at NOBLE’s new Bibliographic Services Supervisor. From my very first job as a teenage library page at the Saugus Public Library to seven years as the Head of Technical Services at the Peabody Institute Library of Danvers, I’ve spent most of my working life at NOBLE libraries and have always lived in a NOBLE community. I was also a long time member and sometimes chair of ERDWG where I got to work with other librarians all over the system on improving the catalog and e-resource access.

I’m excited for this new and challenging direction for my career! I’ll get to support library patrons as I have done and also work together with all my librarian colleagues more closely than I could before. I’m looking forward to supporting you on all things bibliographic.

Upcoming Evergreen 3.13 Upgrade – January 5

Evergreen, Executive Director's Report

NOBLE is pleased to announce the network is upgrading to Evergreen release 3.13 on Sunday, January 5.

Downtime Information

  • All libraries should expect to be down for the entire day Sunday, January 5. The system should be available by the time staff start working on Monday, January 6.
  • We will add messaging to the public catalog one week prior to the upgrade.
  • During the downtime window, the following will be unavailable:
    • Circulation and other staff functions
    • Web catalog
    • Mobile app
    • Patron self services like placing holds, renewals, signing up for ecards and self-check.
  • Authentication via SIP2 (Overdrive, Hoopla, museum pass, EZproxy etc.) will be available for a large portion of the downtime, but will be down for a brief period.
  • Libraries that are open Sunday can use offline circulation. The training system will also be available to look up call numbers, but the date will be one month old and will not include new titles.
  • When the system is back up on Monday, if staff notice any unusual screens, we first recommend that you clear cache and refresh your screen. The Clear Cache Chrome extension allows you to easily clear cache from the Chrome toolbar. If those steps don’t resolve the issue, please contact NOBLE support. 

Previewing 3.13

NOBLE library staff can log into the training system to get a first-hand look at release 3.13, which we will be using for training and testing the new release. Here’s how to login and set search preferences for the old and new versions of the staff catalog: Logging Into the Training System.

  • Please let us know if there are newer staff who can’t access the training system so we can add their accounts.
  • The training system contains a snapshot of NOBLE data so there are holds, overdue, bills, etc., with all patron information anonymized.
  • Feel free to test things, including adding, editing or removing patron, title or item information. Anything you add or change will be gone the next time we update the snapshot for the training system. Nothing will transfer to the production (live) system.

Recording of the December 17 upgrade session | Slides
Register for January 14 Problems and Questions (P’s and Q’s) session
Register for January 22 Problems and Questions (P’s and Q’s) session

Upcoming Training and Upgrade Sessions in November and December

Evergreen, Training

Training sessions in November and December:
(Online via Zoom)

November 19, 2 – 3 PM: List Maker: Making Bookbags of Selected Titles
Learn to use the List Maker to create a list of titles in the bookbag format, which you can share with patrons to make it easy for them to select titles, see what’s available, and place holds. This is a great way to create a list that matches titles from a book display, award list titles, staff picks, or titles related to any season, event or theme.    Here’s an example of the bookbag format: Snowy Days
Registration

November 21, 10 – 11 AM: Meet Me at the Corner of Cat and Circ
How does the system decide how much to bill a patron for lost material?  Why do we get so many alerts at the circ desk (or why don’t we get more?)  What does Age Hold Protection mean, and how is it set up?  What happens to missing and lost items — do they stay in the system forever?  How do parts work?  This session reviews how library loan rules work, and which elements of cataloging affect how circulation works.  It is aimed at both circulation and cataloging staff (especially the designated representatives) and administrators.
Registration

December 3, 10 – 11 AM: Making Most Popular Books Lists
Learn how to use circulation data to create lists of the books, DVDs, etc., that circulated the most for your library, in the past year (or any time period.) These can be as general as adult fiction, as specific as cookbooks or can be lists of the most popular authors based on the checkouts of their titles. 
Registration

December 5, 10 – 11 AM: Gemini AI: Hands-On Workshop
Gemini AI is Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot, available to everyone with a Google Workspace account at https://gemini.google.com. In this session, you’ll learn how Gemini (and other AI chatbots) “think” and what kind of tasks they can do as we work together through guided exercises and sharing screens.
Registration

Evergreen Upgrade Sessions:
(Online via Zoom)

NOBLE is upgrading to Evergreen 3.13 on Sunday, January 5. In these upgrade sessions, NOBLE staff will share the details of the downtime and provide an overview of new features to expect in the next release. Please bring along any questions you may have about the upcoming upgrade.
(Online via Zoom)

December 11, 10 -11 AM: Registration
December 17, 2 – 3 PM: Registration