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WorldCat Discovery beta: Availability/Location Information on Brief Results

August 27, 2015 Author: Jayne DicksonCategories:

 

wds
This month’s WorldCat Discovery installation on August 21, 2015 included the following new features, enhancements and bug fixes.

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.)

New Features and Enhancements

  • Display Availability and Location information on brief results.  With the August release OCLC now displays availability and location information on the search results.  This has been a highly requested feature from current WorldCat Discovery subscribers.

There are two additions to the display:

    1. Summary statement following the title (i.e., 1 of 1 available) so that a patron can immediately see the availability information, and,
    2. Following the brief information about the item there is a new line showing an availability statement. It will include Location, Call number, Status indicator and Status message.

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  • Display Editions and Formats on brief results. Another highly requested enhancement is the option to show the editions and formats link for a particular item immediately on the search results. This will allow users looking for a known item to quickly link from the brief results to the list of other editions and formats available. If there are no editions and formats available for a particular item, that information is also noted with the brief display.

 

editions

 

Note: OCLC installed the ability to activate Get It Now, which provides full-text articles from unsubscribed journals, in WorldCat Discovery. Currently, none of the UC campuses license this service so this feature has not been enabled in any of the UC Melvyl instances.

 

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?)