We are pleased to announce that Alto 5.6.1 is now available on general release to all customers.

You will find the Release Notices and supporting documentation for this release on the Customer Support Portal.

Please ensure that you download and read the relevant documentation for your operating system prior to downloading the installation wraps.

Key features within Alto 5.6.1 are:

• Borrower names and addresses containing Unicode characters can now be imported and displayed in Alto
• Alto user passwords are now subject to a more secure form of encryption
• Users can be prevented from reusing previous passwords
• You can configure the automatic renewal of loans about to become overdue, and inform the borrower
• A number of defects have been fixed
• Authority and bibliographic MARC description files have been amended to include the latest MARC format updates.

A new version of LDS (1.8) is required for this release.  When raising your support case for the LDS upgrade, please include the date when you are planning to upgrade your LMS, as this will allow us to schedule your LDS upgrade.