November 2026

Expanded OCR Language Support for Specto Starter

Specto Starter now supports OCR generation for a significantly broader range of languages through the Tesseract OCR engine. Previously, OCR processing was limited to ten supported languages. As part of this release, OCR support is expanded to include over eiughty languages. With this enhancement, institutions can generate full text for a much wider variety of multilingual content, helping improve searchability, discovery, and access across diverse digital collections.

The OCR language list has been expanded to include all supported Tesseract languages that can be mapped to MARC 21 language codes. Language mappings have been standardized to align OCR processing more closely with MARC cataloging practices, ensuring greater consistency between generated full text and bibliographic metadata.

Share and Download the Current Image View

The NDE embedded viewer now allows users to download or share a specific zoomed region of an image. When viewing a high-resolution image, users can download only the currently visible area or generate a share link that preserves the selected canvas and zoom position. Recipients opening the link are taken directly to the same view, making it easier to reference, discuss, and share specific details within digitized content. For more information, see Viewer Services.

Known limitation: When sharing a zoomed region from a representation that contains multiple files, the shared link currently opens the first file in the representation rather than the selected file. Support for preserving the selected file is planned for a future release.

Preview Digital Resources from Alma in Primo NDE

The Digital Representation Resource Editor in Alma now includes an NDE Viewer link in the Delivery section, enabling administrators, catalogers, and curators to open a digital resource directly in the Primo NDE full record page. When selected, the link automatically opens the relevant representation, allowing staff to review the end-user viewing experience in the NDE Mirador viewer before publishing content.

The NDE Viewer link is displayed when the institution has an NDE Discovery View configured, and the system automatically selects the appropriate view when generating the link. This enhancement simplifies quality assurance and content review workflows by providing quick access to the NDE pages directly from the backend. Because the link opens the live discovery page, the title must be active, not suppressed, and available in discovery indexing for the resource to be displayed. For more information, see Viewer Services.

View EPUB Files Directly in the NDE Viewer

The NDE embedded viewer now supports inline viewing of EPUB files, allowing users to read digital books and publications directly from the full record page without downloading the file or leaving the discovery experience. EPUB content is displayed within the existing viewer framework and includes reading and navigation capabilities, such as table of contents navigation when available in the EPUB metadata.

Users can continue to download and share EPUB files when permitted. For full Specto users,unsupported features such as tagging, document search, and book view are not available for EPUB content at this stage. When an EPUB file cannot be rendered because it is too large, corrupted, or otherwise unsupported, the viewer displays a fallback message and provides a download option when available. This enhancement delivers a more seamless reading experience and extends the range of digital content that can be viewed directly within the NDE record page. For more information, see Viewer Services.

Enhanced Physical Item Selection with the New Item Search Experience

The Related Physical Items workflow now uses the new item search experience, providing improved filtering, sorting, and item selection capabilities. Users can search for physical items using additional facets, including library, location, permanent location, publication, item policy, and item status, making it easier to locate and select relevant items.

When adding related physical items, the new search opens in a sliding pane and supports the existing workflow of building a list of associated items. Each selected item is added to the Related Physical Items table without replacing previously selected items, allowing users to continue adding items as needed.

This enhancement aligns the physical item selection experience with the NG design, while preserving existing functionality and improving usability for digital workflows that link physical items to digital resources. For more information, see Viewer Services.

Sort Representations for Discovery

Specto Starter now enables institutions to control the order in which digital representations are displayed in Discovery services, including Primo NDE, Primo VE, View It, and UResolver. Administrators can configure a default sort order at the institution level, while digital resource managers can override the setting for individual titles when needed. The sorting configuration affects Discovery display only and does not change the order of representations in the backend.

The feature supports both ascending and descending label-based sorting using natural alphanumeric ordering, ensuring that labels containing numbers are displayed in an intuitive sequence. For example, "Volume 2" appears before "Volume 10" when sorted in ascending order. The setting applies to both regular and special representations.

Editing Tagged Entities in the Metadata Editor

When a tagged entity is edited in the Metadata Editor, the entity is automatically untagged and removed from its associated Specto entity group. To preserve entity tagging and group associations, edit tagged entities directly in Specto instead of the Metadata Editor. This enhancement helps ensure that entity groups remain aligned with the current metadata and prevents outdated tag associations from being retained after metadata changes. For more information, see Tagging Entities.

Improved Metadata Recommendations for MARC 6XX and 7XX Fields

Metadata recommendation accuracy has been improved to better distinguish between subject access fields (6XX) and added entry fields (7XX) during the metadata extraction and recommendation process. When a person, organization, or other entity is discussed as a subject of the resource, the system now more accurately recommends the appropriate 6XX field instead of favoring a 7XX field. This enhancement helps produce metadata that is more consistent with MARC cataloging practices and improves the quality of AI-generated recommendations for review by catalogers. For more information, see Metadata Enrichment.

Digital Lending Redesign in Primo NDE

Digital Lending workflows are now fully integrated in Primo NDE , enabling patrons to access loan-restricted digital resources directly from the full record page without being redirected to an external viewer. The new experience supports both short-term and long-term borrowing scenarios and provides a consistent interface for viewing content, joining waitlists, managing active sessions, and receiving availability notifications.

When a resource is available, patrons can start a viewing session directly from the Digital Versions section and access the content within the embedded NDE viewer. Session information, including available viewing time and remaining loan duration, is displayed throughout the borrowing experience. Patrons can also end sessions early, allowing resources to become available to other users more quickly. For active sessions, status and session information persist across page refreshes and return visits, providing a seamless experience when navigating within Primo.

For resources that are currently in use, patrons can join a waitlist directly from the record page and receive clear feedback about their position in the queue. Waitlist status is updated dynamically as the queue changes, and patrons are notified when a resource becomes available. The workflow also supports direct access through notification links while maintaining the appropriate availability and session controls defined by lending policies.

The enhancement includes support for lending policy controls such as concurrent-user limits, configurable session durations, availability notifications, expiration warnings, and reloan restrictions. By moving lending functionality into the NDE viewer, institutions can provide a more streamlined and accessible borrowing experience while maintaining the controls required for managed digital lending programs. For more information, see Long-term and Short-term Digital Lending in Primo NDE.

Text Mention Tagging for UNIMARC Records

Text Mention Tagging now supports UNIMARC records, enabling libraries that catalog using the UNIMARC format to use AI-powered entity extraction, recommendations, and tagging workflows. Librarians can identify, tag, and manage people, organizations, and locations from full-text content while preserving the appropriate UNIMARC field structure and authority mappings.

The enhancement extends AI-generated recommendations, authority-based tagging, manual tagging, and tag editing workflows to UNIMARC records. Tags are created using the appropriate UNIMARC fields and authority records, allowing institutions to maintain metadata practices that align with their cataloging standards. Support is also included for UNIMARC-based authority recommendations, facet generation, and Digital Metadata Assistant workflows.

By expanding Text Mention Tagging to UNIMARC environments, Specto provides a consistent metadata enrichment experience for a broader range of institutions, including libraries that rely on UNIMARC for cataloging and authority control. For more information, see Tagging Entities.

Automatic Caption Generation for Audio and Video Content

Spectocan now generate captions and transcripts for audio and video files using speech-to-text technology. Generated captions are additionally displayed as transcripts alongside audiovisual content, improving accessibility and making spoken content easier to follow, search, and understand.

The generated transcripts also serve as the foundation for additional discovery capabilities, including transcript-based entity extraction and navigation within audiovisual resources. This enhancement helps institutions make audio and video collections more accessible and discoverable without requiring manually created captions. For more information, see Viewer Services.

Search Video Content by Entity

Spectocan now identify and display entity mentions in audio and video content based on transcripts. Users can explore tagged people, organizations, locations, and other entities directly within audiovisual resources, improving content discovery and navigation. The transcripts are synchronized with the audio and video content as they play. Clicking anywhere in the transcript jumps the content to the corresponding frame.

By extending entity tagging to transcripts, this enhancement makes spoken content that has been transcribed easier to search, explore, and access across digital collections. For more information, see Viewer Services.