Following on from the previous announcement, this morning we made the changes to the system necessary for the switch from BDS to Nielsen BookData.

If you have any problems with the changes mentioned in the last blog post, (accessible here) do get in touch with the Support team.

Comments and contact

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Customer Success (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com)

Nielsen to become the main supplier of Bibliographic records

As previously confirmed, from Tuesday 1 April 2025 it will no longer be possible to receive BDS MARC Records from Base. Nielsen BookData (Nielsen BD) has been reestablished as the major supplier of bibliographic metadata to Base. Customers who have experience of receiving Nielsen BookData via Base in the past can rest assured that trade data will not be included thereby conserving a library-appropriate and high quality source of data that all Library Management Cloud (LMC) customers expect.

In readiness for 1 April some simple updates to your system parameters will be required.

For Customers who subscribe to AMS:

No further action is required by you. If you are an Assist Managed Service subscriber, ESS will do this on your behalf.

Your assigned AMS Analyst will proactively create a Case prior to 21 March 2025 to record and track progress of the changes they will be making to your system on your behalf.

For Customers who manage their own system parameters:

We recommend that you follow the instructions in this document as soon as possible and no later than 28 March 2025 to ensure that the Nielsen BD database is accessible to you and active for Base searches from day 1.

Comments and contact

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Customer Success (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).

We’re pleased to announce that the release of Soprano previously in preview has been released to live service this morning. This release includes:

New search option with additional fields to enable more detailed searching for titles

The details are described in this release notice.

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Heather Brown (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).

We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview. This release includes:

New search option with additional fields to enable more detailed searching for titles

Additional search fields (based on the Prism ‘old advanced search’ fields) can now be accessed on the Soprano Resources page. These allow you to carry out more detailed searches adding more criteria either before or after the search. To carry out a search using the new fields, begin by switching to the new search screen and fill in the details. You can choose to add more details e.g. a particular location, either before or after the executing the search.

The new fields are accessed by clicking on the ‘More’ link that appears beside the Find Resources field on the Home page, and beside the search field on the Resources screen.

Once you have clicked on ‘More’, the additional fields will remain visible until you click ‘Less’ to return to the original single search field, or the system times out or you logout.

Note: searching by item barcode can only occur from the existing single search field. Use the ‘Less’ link to return to this screen if required.

The search fields operate as follows:

Find items with…

• all of these words: searches for each word entered. (i.e. word1 + word2 + word3). Only records containing all the words are returned.
• the exact phrase: searches for the exact phrase entered (i.e. all the words entered, in quotes – “word1 + word2”). Only returns records that include the whole phrase somewhere.
• at least one of these words: searches for each of the words entered and returns records that contain at least one of them somewhere (i.e. word1 OR word2 OR word3).
• none of these words: excludes any records that include any of the words entered (i.e. NOT (word1 OR word2)).

Including…

• These fields allow you to limit the records returned, to only those containing the exact word or phrase within the selected index. e.g. entering ‘Miss Marple’ in the Title field will search the title fields for the phrase ‘Miss Marple’ and return those.

Notes for use:

• Location: The Location drop-down is built from the list of your sites in the database.
• Collection: By default, the Collections drop-down is not populated and searches will include everything linked to the tenancy locally (it cannot search remote targets such as EDS). If you wish to populate this drop-down, you need to contact Support to ask for Collections to be configured in the Admin console. Collections that appear in Prism in the Collections facet and are identified in the Admin console-> Prism tenancy-> Collections area can be included.

To preview this release

You can preview this release by inserting ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’: soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. Please remember that it accesses your live data.

Release to the live service

This version of Soprano is expected to be released to the live service on: Wednesday 5th March 2025.

Comments and contact

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Heather Brown (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).

We’re pleased to announce that the release of Soprano previously in preview has been released to live service this morning. This release includes:

• Ad hoc notifications for Inter Library Loan requests
• Updating long overdue items back to In Stock/Loanable status in Return
• Fix to the display of a borrower’s age, related to leap years
• Fix to correctly handle the 040 tag following an import or edit of a marc record (LDS)

The details are described in this release notice.

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Heather Brown (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).

We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview. This release includes:

• Ad hoc notifications for Inter Library Loan requests
• Updating long overdue items back to In Stock/Loanable status in Return
• Fix to the display of a borrower’s age, related to leap years
• Fix to correctly handle the 040 tag following an import or edit of a marc record (LDS)

Ad hoc notifications for Inter Library Loan requests

Ad hoc notifications for Soprano ILL requests enables a Soprano user to create a notification for an ILL request, based on predefined templates. Small changes can be made to the content preview of the notification before it is saved, and it can then be copied to an email. In a future release we plan to provide the ability to send the notification directly by email as it is saved.

The ad hoc notifications use a set of templates that are configured and managed in the Admin console.

One Notification Template Set is used to hold all the templates for ILL requests.  This is linked to Soprano by a Notification Rule in the Soprano tenancy, which enables Soprano to find the templates that are available.

Configuring Ad Hoc notifications is covered in a separate document available here. Note that Ad hoc notifications requires LDS 2.9.38.

Creating an ad hoc notification for an ILL request

1. From the Home page, click on Manage ILL requests.
2. Select the ILL request and click on the Notifications tab.
3. Use the + CREATE NOTIFICATION button to start the process.
   
4. Choose the template you want to use from the list and then the system will automatically populate the Content Preview with the details from the ILL request, borrower and bib records.
5. You can make changes to the content by editing the text in the CONTENT PREVIEW. Tabs can be used to indent text and a URL can be added if necessary. See the on-screen Formatting Tips for details.
   
6. Use the SAVE button to save the ad hoc notification.
7. Once you have created the ad hoc notification you want to send, select it again in the list of notifications and then click OPEN FULL DOCUMENT.
8. Copy and paste the output into an email. (The ability to send the request by email is planned for a future release.)

Updating long overdue items back to In stock/Loanable status in Return

A script (loa_long_odue), can be used to update the status of very overdue items to a locally defined one, e.g. ‘Long overdue’, to ensure they can no longer be reserved. Soprano can now be configured to update the status of these items back to ‘In stock’ (or ‘Loanable’) when they are returned. This is to match the functionality introduced with Bridge Pro 3.1.6.

A new parameter local.item.status.to.update.on.return, is provided for the LDS, which takes the code of the long overdue item status as an argument, e.g. ‘LONG’. If the item being processed in Return has an item status matching that specified in the LDS parameter, Soprano silently updates it. Note that this change requires LDS 2.9.36.

Fix to the display of age, related to leap years

The system now displays the correct age of a borrower, regardless of the number of leap years since their date of birth.

Fix to correctly handle the 040 tag following an import or edit of a marc record

Now when a record is imported, the 040 is no longer updated. In addition, when a bib record is edited the 040 is updated with the editing library’s organisation code when the bib record is saved. Note that this fix requires LDS 2.9.37.

To preview this release

You can preview this release by inserting ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’: soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. Please remember that it accesses your live data.

Note: is it not possible to delete ad hoc notifications so you are advised to carry out testing using test ILL requests and borrower records.

Release to the live service

This version of Soprano is expected to be released to the live service on: Wednesday 5th February 2025.

If you need an LDS upgrade

Your current LDS version number is displayed in the footer of Soprano pages. If you require an upgrade to LDS 2.9.38 (which contains all the functionality in earlier versions) then please raise a support case through the customer support portal.

Comments and contact

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Heather Brown (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).

We’re pleased to announce that to further enhance the security of the Soprano web application, we have made the following changes to the LIVE environment:

• TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 have been deprecated.
• TLS 1.2 continues to be supported and is now the only protocol actively used for secure communications.

Please note that while TLS 1.2 was previously supported, we have now formally disabled older protocols in LIVE, to ensure a higher level of security. Your access to Soprano through web browsers remains unchanged, and no action is required on your part.

Comments and contact

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Heather Brown (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).

We’re pleased to announce there is a new version of the Soprano wrapper available. This new version has been updated with the latest security features for Chromium.

The Soprano wrapper release notice and download can be found here.

Comments and contact

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Heather Brown (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).

We’re pleased to announce that the release of Soprano previously in preview has been released to live service this morning. This release includes:

• Ability to re-link an item record to another bib record

The details are described in this release notice.

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Heather Brown (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).

We’re pleased to announce that the next release of Soprano is now available for preview. This release includes:

Ability to re-link an item record to another bib record

When viewing an item record in Soprano, you can now re-link it to a different bib record. In order to re-link an item you must have rights to edit item records, which requires the following enablement:

• Circulation> Circulate item> Edit Circulate item

To re-link an item record, first find the 001 (or BIB ID) of the bib record the item is to be transferred to. Then, display the item record and click on the pencil beside the title details.

In the search box, enter the 001 of the bib record identified above, and then press Return or use the magnifier to complete the search.

The system will display the record that exactly matches the 001 entered.

Use the select button to complete the re-link of the item.

If the item record is at the status: Potential, Order pending, Order sent, Cancelled or Deleted, or it is directly linked to an ILL request, the pencil will be greyed out with a hover hint.

Changes to the admin console to prepare for Ad hoc notifications in Soprano

Over the next few weeks, we will be releasing new versions of the Admin console in preparation for allowing the configuration of Ad hoc notifications within ILL requests. These changes won’t impact anything already configured and can be ignored when using the Admin console while this work continues. When the changes to the Soprano interface are ready, they will be released in the usual way and we will explain how to set up and use Ad hoc notifications.

To preview this release

You can preview this release by inserting ‘-demo’ into your tenancy URL after the word ‘soprano’: soprano-demo.librarymanagementcloud.co.uk/{your tenancy name}. Please remember that it accesses your live data.

Release to the live service

This version of Soprano is expected to be released to the live service on: Wednesday 24th April 2024.

Comments and contact

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch. You can comment here on the Soprano blog, or contact our Support team directly. To suggest and discuss additional features please contact Heather Brown (csm@librarymanagementcloud.com).