Searching for Series in Aspen

Aspen isn't set up to display series in volume order, but there are a couple ways to get pretty close.

Using the Series Search Type

There is an option to change "by Keyword" to "by Series" in the first drop-down menu.

When you search that way, the default sort type is "Best Match."

The "Best Match" sort type takes into account things like circulation, the number of copies owned, the number of holds placed, etc. This means the books are in no particular order based on volume number or publication date. You can change the sort option from "Best Match" to "Publication Year Asc" using the drop-down menu.

When Aspen sorts by publication year, its looks for publication information in subfield c of the 264 field first. If this subfield doesn't exist, it looks in subfield c of the 260 field. If this subfield doesn't exist, it looks in position 7 of the 008 field in the fixed fields.

Aspen only looks at publication year, not volume number. If there are multiple years in the grouped work, Aspen uses the earliest year it finds for sort order. It should then be pretty close to volume order, unless there are multiple titles that share the same publication year. If there are multiple titles with the same year, Aspen sorts them alphabetically by title.

Using the Series Hyperlinks

If you have found a title (no matter how you searched for it) that is part of a series, there will be a "Series" line under the title and author.

The name of the series is a hyperlink. When you click the series name, Aspen automatically sets the search type to "by Series" and the sort type to "Publication Year Asc."