Author: Elizabeth Thomsen

Aspen Previews

Aspen

We’ve been working on our Aspen implementation behind the scenes, and now it’s time to give you a sneak preview! We have four Aspen Preview sessions coming up in May, two hours on Zoom. These sessions are aimed at staff who work with patrons of all ages, and anyone else who wants to see the new public catalog and how it’s going to work. We’ll walk you through all the ways that patrons will browse through new titles and lists curated by library staff, how search works, how Aspen groups different formats and editions, how patrons will be able to preview, place holds and checkout OverDrive titles right from the catalog and much more!

Each session is being recorded, and they are likely to vary somewhat as we make progress. I will send a message to NOBLE-Info when the recording is available, and will change the Registration link below to the recording link. We’re recording the presentation and not the questions and discussion that follows, but we have the details from that and will be posting the questions and answers and summaries of the discussion.

Tuesday May 6 2-4 PM Aspen Preview 1 Recording
Thursday May 8 10 AM-12 PM Aspen Preview 2 Recording
Friday May 16 10 AM-12 PM Registration
Tuesday May 20 2-4 PM Registration

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.

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

Summer Training Schedule

Training

We have several training sessions coming up this summer on Evergreen, List Maker, Google Workspace and OverDrive. All are online via Zoom, will be recorded and will be repeated in the fall.

You can see the full list, divided by topic and with registration links, on this document:
NOBLE Training Schedule

If you prefer a chronological view, you can see the training sessions as well as other meetings and events on the Staff Information System Calendar

Libby Enhancements to Magazines

Libby, Overdrive

It’s now easier than ever to find, read and manage magazines in Libby. Now you can find a magazine, open it, browse through the pages and start reading without checking it out. When you close the magazine, you’ll have the option to subscribe and have the latest issue automatically appear in the new Magazine Rack view under Shelf.

Here’s a good introduction to the new magazine options aimed at patrons:
A New Way to Enjoy Magazines in the Libby App

And here’s the updated Libby Help section on Magazines with answers to frequently (and not-so-frequently) asked questions: Libby Help: Reading Magazines