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WorldCat Discovery beta: Linked Author Names & Subject Facet

May 14, 2015 Author: Jayne DicksonCategories:

wds2
Recent Enhancements, News, and Activities

This month’s WorldCat Discovery installation on May 7, 2015 included the following new features & enhancements.

The running list of release notes can be found at http://www.cdlib.org/services/d2d/melvyl/public/. (Note that many of these do not have an impact on Melvyl.)

  • Hot Linked Author Names. OCLC has implemented hot linked author names on search results, side panel, and detailed view to trigger an “au: search”, as well as for authors on Editions and My List. In WorldCat Local (WCL), hot linked author names are only available on the Detailed record.

 

au_hotlink

  • Added Subject Facet. OCLC had added the Conspectus topic (subject) facet, utilizing the top levels of Conspectus: Division and Category. Conspectus is a three-level subject hierarchy (Division > Category > Subject) that serves as a blueprint of how the WorldCat Collection Analysis service aggregates three distinct classification systems (LC, Dewey, and NLM). Call numbers from all three classification schemes are mapped to this hierarchy.

Upon an initial search, the topic facet is populated with Division headers associated with all items in that results list. Counts are also associated with and displayed for the Conspectus results. OCLC has implemented this to display additional results consistent with the Top 6 results and the See All feature.

 

conspectus

  • “Access online” button renamed. Based on user feedback, the “Access online” button text has been changed to “View online”. In the WCD interface, clicking the “View online” button displays the UC-eLinks menu.
  • Performance Improvements. OCLC made some changes with the May release that significantly improves response time for all WorldCat Discovery libraries. OCLC will continue to monitor performance and address any issues they find, whether reported by member libraries or based on their own analysis.

WorldCat Discovery Services (WCD) Description

OCLC is working on major changes to WorldCat Local: a new discovery interface with major functional and design improvements. FirstSearch and WorldCat Local will be merged onto this new platform called WorldCat Discovery Services.

UC WCD Information on the CDL Website

Information on the WorldCat Discovery Services (Beta) for the UC campuses is available on the WorldCat Discovery Beta webpage. This webpage includes

  • Links to the UC campus (and union) WCD-Beta instances where you can test drive the functionality
  • OCLC’s project timeline (e.g., when will UC migrate to the new platform?)