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:
- CW MARS – For an example from one of their academic libraries, visit the AIC catalog
- CLAMS
- Minuteman
Much more information will be forthcoming. Feel free to let us know if you have questions.