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A guide to configuring the SimplyE Circulation Manager to provide NoveList Select Title Recommendations to the SimplyE mobile clients.

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Why NoveList Select

NoveList Select is a popular service from EBSCO that libraries use to augment their collection discovery by providing recommendations to users. These recommendations are algorithmically determined based on an array of factorsread-alike recommendations are curated by librarians and book experts at NoveList. SimplyE already provides lists of other titles in a library's collection that are in the same series, or by the same author or authors, but NoveList provides linkages to titles and works by others authors and similar items in a library's collection that are less obvious.

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SimplyE piggybacks off your current NoveList Select for Catalog subscription similar title recommendations. The Circulation Manager queries the NoveList API for information about items in your collection using API account credentials NoveList will supply to you (see below). This integration with NoveList Select is only available to libraries which have a currently active NoveList Select for Catalog subscription. If your library currently does not have an active NoveList Select subscription,   contact EBSCO at NoveListSelectSupport@ebsco.com for information on starting a subscriptionnovelist@ebsco.com or click the Request Info button on their website's NoveList Select page.

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Obtaining NoveList Select API Credentials

To request credentials for this integration, remember that The NoveList integration with SimplyE requires that your library must have an an active NoveList  NoveList Select for Catalog subscription with EBSCO. To request API credentials for the SimplyE integration and that you submit a request to NoveList for unique profile credentials related to SimplyE. To get started, contact NoveList Support at NoveListSelectSupport@ebsco.com, using the using the following subject line and email body. Substitute your library’s name and NoveList Select for Catalog subscription customer ID  for (if you know it) for the <CustID> placeholder text. (Your customer ID will have the form snnnnnnn.main.novsel).

To: NoveListSelectSupport@ebsco.com

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We are requesting NoveList Select for SimplyE credentials for <Library Name>. Our EBSCO CustID is: <CustID>. We currently have an active subscription to NoveList Select for Catalog.


Once you have submitted the email request to NoveList Support, you will receive a response with your account's API credentials. When you have the credentials, you can configure the NoveList integration as shown in the next sectionWithin five business days, the NoveList support team will provide you with your unique profile credentials for NoveList Select for SimplyE. When these credentials have been configured in the SimplyE Circulation Manager (as shown below), your collections data will be sent to NoveList automatically at a weekly cadence (Saturday night/Sunday morning). Once the collections data has been received and processed by EBSCO (usually on Monday), you will begin to see collection-specific recommendations in your SimplyE app.

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Configuring SimplyE Circulation Manager with NoveList Select.

Once you have SimplyE Circulation Manager installed and you have received API credentials from NoveList, you can use the SimplyE Admin Interface to configure NoveList Select recommendations for your library.

For Admins

Once the NoveList integration configuration is complete, a cron task will take care of uploading to EBSCO the required title data run the  novelist_update script, scheduled for midnight (local time to the circ-scripts container) over Saturday/Sunday, which will upload ISBN/title information from the library's catalog. At one point, this process was a manual process where data had to be exported from the library's ILS. The novelist_update script now takes care of that automatically. collection to EBSCO. Do be aware that the script only runs once a week, early on Sunday, by default. (You can change that in the /etc/cron.d/circulation cron file; if so, schedule the upload during off-peak hours to minimize service impact. Checking first with EBSCO support staff is a good idea.)

The NoveList integration with SimplyE requires that you submit a request to NoveList for unique profile credentials related to SimplyE