Placards

 

Placards

With these settings, you can:

  • Create a placard
  • Customize a placard
  • Schedule placards
  • Specify keywords or phrases to trigger placards
  • Disable or delete a placard

  

Placards are like strategic advertisements that can help you promote resources, events, lists, and more! When users perform catalog searches that match keywords or phrases you specify, your placard will appear above search results.

 Looking for examples of placards? Click Here.

 

Our library partners have used placards in some of the following ways:

  • Feature an online resource, such as Mango Languages or Chilton Auto Repair Manuals
  • Link to a "While You Wait" staff list of readalikes when searching for a popular title or author
  • Advertise an upcoming author talk event when searching for the author or their books
  • Link to resources for suicide prevention when searching for related terms
  • Promote story time or kids events when searching for popular children's book topics
Read on to learn how to create and manage placards.

  

Copy Placards

As of the 24.01 release, libraries are now able to copy placards.

This functionality will be available to any staff member with the permissions to add new placards.

To begin, click into a Placard you'd like to copy.

Then, click the Copy button at the top.

This will automatically open a new placard with the default name of Copying {new placard ID}.

Aspen will copy all fields over in the exisitng placard except for Title and the Libraries and Locations that it is published to.

Be sure to give the new placard a Title, make any updates to the existing fields, and then publish to your catalogs by selecting Libraries and Locations at the bottom.

 

Updated 2024-01-16 km bws
Disable or Delete a Placard

To temporarily disable a placard:

  1. From Aspen Administration, navigate to Local Catalog Enrichment → Placards.
  2. Locate the placard you wish to disable and click the ID number to edit.
  3. Uncheck all libraries and locations, then save.
  4. The placard will no longer appear in search results.
  5. To re-activate, edit the placard again and re-select the appropriate Libraries and Locations, then save.

 


 

To permanently delete a placard:

  1. From Aspen Administration, navigate to Local Catalog Enrichment → Placards.
  2. Locate the placard you wish to disable and click the ID number to edit.
  3. Click Delete and confirm.

Make a Placard Show Up on Every Search

Want to have a placard show up on every search? Maybe you are promoting a special event, a new database, Summer Reading, or pushing a survey and you want every one searching the catalog to see it.

When setting up your placard, use the % symbol as the trigger word.

Since this will show up for every search, we suggest making this only scheduled for a certain, limited amount of time. You also may consider making this dismissible so that patrons don't continue to see it over and over. You might also consider creating a system message instead, which could show up at the top of every screen, or only on user account screens. 

Placards with Duplicate Trigger Words

You might have placards that share the same trigger word and are curious how Aspen handles this.

When placards share the same trigger word, the placard saved most recently will display when that keyword is searched.

If you are using the same word across mutliple placards, we suggest you make the placards dismissible. This way, when one placard is dismissed, another placard using the same word could display in its place. This would also be the case if one placard was set with a start and end date. After it expires, the duplicate keyword will display the next created placard.


 

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Dismissal Button Options

Placards can be marked Dismissable when they are created. This allows logged in users to close out the placard if they no longer wish to see it. We recommend this, especially for placards where you have assigned a lot of trigger words that are generic and might cause the placard to show repetively to users. 

By default, the button for dismissal looks like this and displays the text "Don't show this again"

There are additional button options in Aspen Administration > Theme & Layout > Layout Settings:

Changes made here will be reflected immediately.

If you only select Show Dismiss Placard Button in Top Right Corner:

The button will look like this:

If you only select Show Dismiss Placard Button as X (Close) Icon:

The button will look like this:

If you select both Show Dismiss Placard Button in Top Right Corner and Show Dismiss Placard Button as X (Close) Icon:

The button will look like this:

 

Updated 2023-02-23 km bws
User-Dismissed Placard Behavior

Should a user dismiss a placard, then the placard will always remain dismissed for them.

However, Aspen ties these dismissal settings to the unique placard id. A placard with a different id value and identical trigger words as a dismissed placard will still show to all users.

If you need to update information on a dismissable placard or want to "reset" placards that may have been dismissed by users, make a new placard with the same trigger words.

 

Updated 2023-02-23 maf bws

Placard CSS

Add a Placard Button

In your placard > CSS, add this code to create a placard button. You can change the hex codes to adjust the colors, font to adjust the font, and cutomize the sizes in this code:

.myButton {
background-color:#004d71;
border-radius:3px;
border:1px solid #124d77;
display:inline-block;
cursor:pointer;
color:#ffffff;
font-family:Montserrat;
font-size:13px;
padding:6px 24px;
text-decoration:none;
}
.myButton:hover {
background-color:#ffffff;
text-decoration:none;
}
.myButton:active {
position:relative;
top:1px;
}

Change Placard Colors

To adjust these placard options with CSS, put in Themes & Layouts > Theme > click into theme > Additional CSS.

Change placard color for all placards

.placard {

background-color: #FFFFFF;

}


Change placard color for individual placard

would need the specific id of that placard

div#placard1.placard {

background-color: #FFFFFF;

}

Video