SWIFT Migration Project Update – August 2023

I hope that everyone is finding ways to get a little more juice out of summer before turning your attention back to school, or, if you are like me, to finding uses for a LOT of zucchini (I’ll never learn). Speaking of bounty, this summer had big news for SWIFT, and our participating libraries’ ability to borrow and lend via Prospector. Keep reading for the details!

What’s Newest?

At long last, we are pleased to announce that all public and special (57 in all) AspenCat libraries that participate in SWIFT are now live on patron-initiated borrowing AND lending through Direct to INN-Reach integration (D2IR) within the Koha integrated library system (ILS). Prior to this implementation, five early adopters were using this integration,  34 AspenCat libraries were participating in Prospector as staff-initiated borrowers only through the Resource Sharing Broker (RSB), while another 18 had been waiting patiently to resume borrowing and lending since the old SWIFT system was decommissioned in December of 2020. This represents a significant achievement in SWIFT’s migration to Prospector, and for resource sharing in Colorado, and was a true group effort between the State Library, CLiC, the Alliance, and our software vendors.

We are also continuing to work with automated libraries (that are not part of the AspenCat consortium) to offer patron-initiated borrowing, and lend materials in their collections to other Prospector libraries through the Resource Sharing Broker (RSB). Since our last update, we completed an implementation project with Westminster Public library – they went live with lending in mid-May. This was particularly exciting, because this project is the first one that State Library staff has taken the lead on – meaning that we completed the data analysis, profiling, and most implementation tasks, rather than Innovative Interfaces completing these steps on our behalf. Now that we are able to do this work more independently, without as much assistance from the software vendor, we hope to move these projects through a little faster. If you would like to join the queue for a full implementation project, reach out to us at swift-support@coloradovirtuallibrary.org.

New SWIFT Knowledge Base Content

We continue to add information and resources to the Knowledge Base to help you get the most out of your participation in the SWIFT service. In addition to documentation and training videos for RSB users, we’ve created extensive documentation for the AspenCat/Koha direct integration, added webinar recordings, and policy and best practices resources. Check it out! And, if you have suggestions for information you would like to see, or other topics we should cover, please let us know by emailing suggestions to swift-support@coloradovirtuallibrary.org.