WorldCat Discovery release notes, April 2020
Release Date: April 23, 2020
Introduction
This release of WorldCat Discovery provides a number of new features and enhancements in addition to numerous bug fixes. These features will help you manage more complex workflows, including:
- Expanding your search using authority files
- Additional labels for customizing filters
- Updated citation style for APA
- Ability to scope down to all treat as held databases
Many of these enhancements are the direct result of your feedback.
Recommended actions
For this release, we recommend that you review the following checklists and complete the relevant tasks so that you can adjust your policies and workflows and train your staff. These checklists identify updates that we have determined as significant for most institutions. We encourage you to review all of the items in the release notes to determine whether there are other items that might require additional action or follow up by your institution.
Administrative actions
These items require immediate action or decisions.
| Action |
|---|
|
Enable search expansion using authority files |
Follow-up actions
In an effort to keep your staff informed of new features and changes, you may also want to consider these items.
| Action |
|---|
|
Review search expansion choices with staff members. |
New features and enhancements
Expanding your search using authority files
Users can now enable searching across authority files to find relevant search terms, even when using related, variant or deprecated search terms.
Search Expansion
- A patron’s search term matches on 1xx and 4xx fields of an authority record in order to obtain an authorized term and any related terms to be used in the search query.
- These authorized and related terms will be added to the original search term to expand the search.
Service Configuration Settings
Configuration for this feature is in worldcat.org/config> WorldCat Discovery > Search Settings > in the accordion labeled Search Expansion Settings. The accordion is closed by default. When you open the menu, the settings are disabled by default as seen in this screen shot below.
You can configure the following settings
- Enable or disable the “Expand query using authority data” to show the setting in the Discovery UI
- Enable or disable the “Expand query using authority data” by default when searching in the Discovery interface
- Select any or all authority files
When these features are enabled in WorldCat Discovery, the informational bar indicates the expanded terms were used for the search. Users can click the links in the informational bar to see what related terms were used, or they can decide to search again without using expanded terms.
The screen shot below shows the informational bar with these links.
If you click on the “include related terms” link, you will see all the related terms that are now being searched as well as your original search:
Your library staff set the default configuration for this new feature. During any session a user can change the settings by switching the “Expand search with related terms” toggle shown in this screen display.
New labels added for customized filters in the dropdown menus
Based on feedback from our community members we have added new options for customized filters.The following new labels are now available under Search Settings > Search Filters Settings in all supported languages:
| Filter Type: | Filter Label: |
| Library | Owned by Library |
| Format | Item Format |
| Topic | Subject Headings |
| Database | Results Source |
| Source Collection |
Updated citation style for APA
As part of ongoing updates to citation styles available to our WorldCat Discovery users, the APA 7th edition is now available in WorldCat Discovery citation options. Prior to this release WorldCat Discovery offered APA 6th edition.
Bug fixes
Corrected issue with scoping down to Level 1 holdings when using Metasearch Content module “Treat as Held”
When you have enabled a database in worldcat.org/config>Metasearch Content>Default Databases and Licensed Content module and are treating the entire database as held by your institution by enabling the toggle to “Treat as Held” you will now see functionality working for all scoping levels when searching in the WorldCat Discovery interface.
When your users are viewing search results scoped down to their institution in WorldCat Discovery search results, all records from databases set to “Treat as Held” will return correctly.
Prior to this release, users did not see all results from these databases when scoped to their library holdings and needed to adjust their scoping level to Libraries Worldwide to see all results from databases set to “Treat as Held.”
Translation of all seasons in Journal availability status display corrected
When viewing the WorldCat Discovery interface in their preferred language, users will now see the season, if included in the Journal availability status display, translated correctly. Prior to this release, the season defaulted to English even when it was not the preferred language display.
New content
This is a list of new databases added to WorldCat Discovery, WorldCat Local and WorldCat.org since our last update.
You can enable these databases as search options in the Licensed Content and Databases module of the OCLC Service Configuration site. Please remember that your library must have a valid subscription to these databases in order to enable them.
Available in WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat.org
- From Alexander Street
-
BBC Literary Adaptations in Video – Novels adapted into BBC television programs.
Occupational Therapy: Physical Modalities – An instant access, streaming video, and text database featuring lecture-based vides and a companion textbook for students of occupational therapy.
- From Brill
-
Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online - Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online: Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism is the first comprehensive academic reference work devoted to the plurality of Buddhist traditions across Asia, offering readers a balanced and detailed treatment of this complex phenomenon in six thematically arranged volumes.
Literary Adaptations in Video – Novels adapted into BBC television programs.
Occupational Therapy: Physical Modalities – An instant access, streaming video, and text database featuring lecture-based vides and a companion textbook for students of occupational therapy.
- From Human Kinetics
-
Human Kinetics - Publisher of books, continuing education courses and journals for Fitness, Exercise, Coaching and Sport.
Available in WorldCat Discovery
- From Gale
-
Archives Unbound - Targeted collections of interest to scholars engaged in serious research.
Important links
Support website(s)
Support information for this product and related products can be found at:
Include Request ID with problem reports
When reporting an issue with WorldCat Discovery, it is extremely helpful to include the Request ID. The Request ID is found at the bottom of the screen on which the issue occurred. Including this information allows us to directly trace what happened on the request we are troubleshooting.
