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WorldCat Discovery beta: “Instrumentation” helps musicians choose ensemble materials

November 28, 2017 Author: Jayne DicksonCategories:


This month’s WorldCat Discovery installation on November 2, 2017 included the following new features and enhancements.
The running list of release notes can be found at http://www.oclc.org/support/services/discovery/release-notes.en.html. (Note that many of these enhancements do not have an impact on Melvyl since we are currently using WorldCat Local and are only in Preview mode for WorldCat Discovery.)

New Features and Enhancements

“Instrumentation” helps musicians choose materials for their ensembles. In collaboration with the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG), the previous “Medium of Performance” field within the detailed record now displays using preferences collected by MOUG and defined by the greater music librarian community. “Instrumentation” displays number of performers, the total performers/soloists/ensembles. The “Numeric Designation” and “Key” fields are no longer duplicated:

 


Additionally, alternate instruments display with an “OR”:


Doubling instruments display with a forward slack “/”:


And notes display with brackets “[]”:

Ungrouped results show consistent information. Records displayed in ungrouped results now show the same data as records in grouped results:

 

 

  1. “Held by” statement is visible at all times.
  2. Fulfillment options for full text and availability display on both results from the same cluster.
  3. Moving to another page will not revert the “Group related editions” selection, which could cause an oops page to appear

Known Issue: “Library” sort option does not work with ungrouped worldwide results. The “Library” sort option does not correctly filter results based on holdings groups when “Libraries WorldWide” is selected as the scope option.

While OCLC works to improve the “Library” sort option, you can continue to get relevant grouped results using the “Library” sort option or switch to the improved “Best Match and “Recency” algorithms for grouped or ungrouped results.
WorldCat Discovery (WCD)

OCLC is working on major changes to WorldCat Local: a new discovery interface with major functional and design improvements. WorldCat Local will be replaced by a new platform called WorldCat Discovery.
Information on the WorldCat Discovery (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?)

FirstSearch

In March 2016, OCLC announced it was keeping FirstSearch as a separate product rather than merging it into WorldCat Discovery as originally planned. We do not yet have a timeline for the new FirstSearch beta.