Melvyl Enhancements – August 2011

Melvyl Enhancements – August 2011

Several enhancements improve the user experience in Melvyl as a result of OCLC’s Sunday, August 21 install.  The improvements are shown in detail in this PDF.  (There are some items that do not apply to the UC libraries’ versions of Melvyl because they refer to features that UC has not yet turned on, or that OCLC backed out shortly after the install. Features that are not currently turned on for UC may be added in the future.)

Boolean support

The words ‘and‘, ‘or‘ and ‘not‘ are no longer treated as search terms. They are now treated as Boolean operators.  For instance, in a search like:
— dog and cat
No longer translates to
— dog AND and AND cat
Instead the new meaning of this search is
— dog AND cat

Additionally, putting a ‘+‘ before the ‘and‘, ‘or‘ or ‘not‘ changes them back into terms so a query like:
— dog +and cat
is once again handled as:
— dog AND and AND cat

[Note: CDL Melvyl Quick Reference guides and the Melvyl FAQ have been updated with this information.]

Common Word Exclusion

Before the query is sent to the search engine, any words from the common word list (below) will be excluded from the query.  Any words in the query that start with the character ‘+’ (and) or ‘–‘ (not) will not be excluded from the query.

Double-quoted terms are left untouched. They will remain in the query as they were entered even if common words appear within the quotes.

The following is the current list of common words to be excluded (with the option to add more later):

• English: a an are as at be but by for from had have he her his how in is it of on that the this to was which with you
• French: de la le les des un une
• German: der das dass du er sie es wer wie mit am im in aus auf ist sein wird ihr ihre ihres als von mit dich dir mich mir mein sein kein wird

DOI links for all item types

Including DOI links within the electronic link display provides an additional source for the user to access full text results.  Specifically, the DOI URL in the 901/c field is hyperlinked and displayed on the detailed record per the following rules:

• For Journal and Chapter, the DOI link displays first in the “Other libraries” section of the “Links to this item”.
• For Article, the DOI link displays first in the “Other libraries” section of the “Links to this journal/publication”.
• DOI link text reads “View full text”, and when the user mouses over this, the DOI URL displays.

[Note:  This feature is not working optimally for all UC records; we have reported problems to OCLC.]

Items can now be searched in Course Reserves [Note: This only impacts UCI, which is piloting this feature.]

Items that have been added to courses in the Course Reserves module can now be searched.  In the search results list, the course(s) with which the item is associated will be displayed.

Also, the name of the course associated with a temporary item is now displayed.

WorldCat Local Mobile Enhancements

Option to configure the “Full Site” button in the mobile footer using the Mobile Client Library URLs Service Configuration option.

Display of institution branches on mobile landing page.

And contact information for each branch, available from tapping/clicking “Branches” option.

[Note:  If your campus wishes to activate any of these new services, please send a request to melvylops@cdlib.org .]

WorldCat Local User Support Center (WCL USC) Enhancements

The WCL USC will now contain a WorldCat Local Events Calendar, which will list upcoming dates of interest.  The calendar can be accessed from the Home (look for the calendar icon and link located just below the “Recent News” section in the PDF) as well as from the News page.

You may log in to the WorldCat Local USC with a WorldCat account or OCLC Service Configuration username/password at http://www.oclc.org/support/worldcatlocal/.  If you do not remember your password, reset it here.  Or if you need an account, contact Orders Services orders@oclc.org with your name, email address, and OCLC Symbol.