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Changes to the Melvyl Catalog

July 28, 2005 Author: CDLCategories:

The CDL is pleased to announce several enhancements to the Melvyl® Catalog.  These changes to the user interface may have an impact on campus guides, training materials and teaching strategies.

1. After receiving several suggestions, and after careful consideration and testing, name subfields, which were not formerly present in the keyword index, were added to Melvyl’s keyword index.  These include the following:

  1. 100 (Main Entry)$a – Personal name
  2. 110 (Main Entry) $a – Corporate name or jurisdiction name as entry element
  3. 511 $a – Participant or performer not
  4. 518 $a – Date/time and place of an event note
  5. 700 (Added Entry – Personal Name) $a – Personal name
  6. 710 (Added Entry – Corporate Name) – Corporate name or jurisdiction name as entry element

The CDL has now rerun the entire keyword index, so that all names have retroactively been added to this index and are available for searching.  For example, search keyword = Anne Krueger. Reindexing has taken about one week.

2. Volume information (490 $v – Volume number/sequential designation) has also been added to the keyword index, so that Melvyl catalog users can perform a keyword search for a particular volume in a series, previously only possible when searching by Series.  Series is a search field novice users may be unfamiliar with They may have more successful searches now when searching keyword with volume numbers. For example, search keyword = NBER 112

3. With input from Music and Literature Librarians, and via Users Council for wider campus input, Uniform Title sort was created and brought into Melvyl.  Users can now sort by Uniform Title, in addition to sorting by Year, Author or Title.  (This change was originally scheduled to be moved into the Catalog in late May, but the date was rescheduled.)

4. The Review format has changed, with the addition of a column for Uniform Title.  Catalog users must now select the highlighted number in the far left hand column of the Review format to see the full record.  (Currently, users click on the Details/Locations link to see the full record.)  This change will impact the Review format only.

Melvyl Help and Melvyl Guides are being changed to reflect these changes.