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WorldCat Discovery beta: Improved filtering for author names on brief results

April 17, 2019 Author: Jayne DicksonCategories:

The WorldCat Discovery installation on April 17, 2019 included the following new features and enhancements.

The running list of release notes can be found at https://help.oclc.org/Discovery_and_Reference/WorldCat_Discovery/Release_notes. (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

Improved filtering for author names on brief results. When a user narrows her/his search results by selecting an author name from the filters and facets listed on the left side of the brief search results screen, the name of the author will now be enclosed with quotations to ensure the author name is treated as an author phrase rather than an author keyword. This update ensures that users will see more precise results when author filtering is in use.

For example, selecting Garcia Marquez, Gabriel from the Author section of facets and filters will now narrow search results to only display the exact match of the author name increasing the precision of the author facet.

 

Informative display when an undefined search is attempted. When a user attempts to execute a search from the Advanced Search screen without entering any text, WorldCat Discovery will now display a warning message that provides context about how to correct their workflow in order to retrieve results. Prior to this release there was no indication on the advanced search page to indicate to a user why a search failed when no search parameter was entered.


 

Bug Fixes

Author relator terms in the 1xx and 7xx fields now translate in WorldCat Discovery. In WorldCat Discovery, the author relator metadata will now translate in the WorldCat Discovery interface. Prior to this release, relator metadata displayed in only English. This fix applies to the following MARC subfields/fields.

  • Subfield d and subfield e of the following MARC fields:
    • 100
    • 110
    • 700
    • 710
  • Subfield j and subfield 4 of the following MARC fields:
    • 111
    • 711

Translation of the relator terms are supported in the following languages in the April 2019 release with the remaining WorldCat Discovery languages planned for May of 2019.

  • German
  • Dutch
  • French
  • Portuguese

WorldCat Discovery (WCD)

WorldCat Local is being replaced by a new discovery interface, WorldCat Discovery. The end of life date for WorldCat Local is August 9, 2019 at which time URLs from WorldCat Local will be redirected to WorldCat Discovery. Campuses will switchover at the end of their academic term before August 9, 2019.

Read the announcement of the switchover for details (dated February 12, 2019).

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

  • Links to the UC campus (and union) WorldCat Discovery instances where you can test drive the functionality
  • Dates for campus switchover