WorldCat Discovery special release notes, June 26, 2023

WorldCat Discovery spelling suggestions pilot special release highlights 

This special WorldCat Discovery release will include pilot access to a new spelling suggestion feature for WMS, WorldCat Discovery Premium, and group catalog subscriptions.

During the pilot, WorldCat Discovery will check all search queries for spelling errors and suggest corrections when it detects likely misspellings. OCLC will analyse data to decide whether we will be able to continue to offer this feature at sustainable cost by applying a search result count threshold below which WorldCat Discovery will check spelling suggestions.

The feature will be active by default for all the eligible subscription categories above. Institutions will be able to opt out of the pilot feature by turning it off in the WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Local > Search Settings > Search Defaults area of OCLC Service Configuration.

WorldCat Discovery spelling suggestions pilot

With this release, users of WMS, WorldCat Discovery Premium, and group catalogs will see suggested corrections for potentially misspelt query terms displayed in an informational alert at the top of their search results. 

WorldCat Discovery will display the suggested spelling correction in bold type within the context of the full search query.

It will display the amended query with the suggested spelling correction as a clickable link.  When a user clicks this link, WorldCat Discovery will return results for the amended query.

Disable/Enable WorldCat Discovery spelling suggestions

The spelling suggestion feature will be active by default for all eligible subscription categories:

• WMS
• WorldCat Discovery Premium
• Group catalogs

You may opt out of the feature by turning it off in the WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Local > Search Settings > Search Defaults area of OCLC Service Configuration.

Misspellings and diacritics

For some words that contain diacritics, when a potential misspelling is detected, the suggested correction lacks the appropriate diacritic(s). Nevertheless, in most of these cases, due to WorldCat indexing rules that normalize diacritics, if a user clicks the suggestion, they will receive the same results as if the suggestion had included the diacritic.

Examples:

For some other words that contain diacritics, misspellings may not be detected.

Examples:

Office hours

• https://www.oclc.org/community/discovery/events.en.html

Product website

More product information can be found here.

Support website(s)

Support information for this product and related products can be found at:

• WorldCat Discovery support resources  
• WorldCat Discovery training
• Release notes
• OCLC customer support
• Browser compatibility chart

If you have additional questions, please contact OCLC Customer Service by calling 1-800-848-5800 or 1-614-793-8682 Monday – Friday 7 a.m. – 9p.m. ET, or email support@oclc.org. For support enquiries in the UK and Ireland, please contact the Support Desk by calling +44-(0)114-281 60 42 or e-mailing support-uk@oclc.org. Support is available between the hours of 09:00 and 17:30 (UK Time).