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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.

E-rate Pilot Program

E-Rate, Executive Director's Report

NOBLE held an informational session on Tuesday, March 18 about an e-rate and filtering pilot program that we are kicking off this spring.

NOBLE members voted in 2001 to decline E-rate Internet funding if it means staying in compliance with the Children’s Internet Protection Act. A key component of the Act is that e-rate recipients must provide a content filter on all library-owned computers, including those used by staff, to block visual depictions that are “harmful to minors.”

NOBLE is implementing a pilot program with two or three libraries to test a filtering solution with the ultimate goal to 1) add a Cybersecurity measure against web sites with malware and 2) realize some cost savings in telecommunications services by supporting filtering at the CIPA level. Filtering technology has seen many changes over the past 20 years and the amount of money NOBLE could save has increased.

The session included presentations from e-rate consultant Aleck Johnson, who provided an overview of the e-rate program and its requirements; librarian Carrie Sherman of the Attleboro Public Library, who talked about her library’s implementation of filtering in preparation for e-rate participation, and NOBLE Systems Manager Martha Driscoll, who demonstrated the SafeDNS filter we are considering trying in pilot libraries.

For those who missed the informational session, the recording is now available.

Slides from Aleck Johnson’s e-rate presentation

Libraries interested in participating in the e-rate pilot should send an email to Kathy at klussier@noblenet.org by Wednesday, March 26.

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