WorldCat Discovery release notes, September 2026

Discover richer information about authors through the hover-over knowledge card with images and WorldCat Entities details

You can now use the hover-over knowledge card to quickly learn more about a person while exploring WorldCat Discovery search results.
The card now includes information from WorldCat Entities, such as a description and key dates. Images from Europeana and Wikidata provide additional visual context when available.

To help protect the privacy of living people, birth dates will now display only when a death date is also available.

The hover-over knowledge card is also now configurable, giving libraries greater control over whether the card and its images are available to users. Libraries can choose to:

•    Enable or disable the hover-over knowledge card
•    Enable or disable Europeana as an image source
•    Enable or disable Wikidata as an image source

The hover-over knowledge card and both image sources are enabled by default. No configuration changes are required to use the default experience. To configure these options, go to Service Configuration > Display Settings > WorldCat Entities knowledge card
 

Identify and manage borrowed items more easily in My Account

You can now more easily identify and review items in My Account with additional item information and the option to display more records on a single page.

View additional item information

The Checkouts and Borrowing History tabs now display additional information to help you identify specific items.

When available, the following information displays for each item:

• Branch
• Volume / Description
• Barcode

The Format field has also been repositioned to display after the author and before publisher information, providing a more consistent presentation of bibliographic information.

Display up to 250 items per page

The Checkouts and Borrowing History tabs now include an option to display up to 250 items on a single page.

The Results per page menu now includes the following options:

• 10
• 25
• 50
• 250

The default remains 25 items per page.

Selecting 250 can make it easier to review accounts with a large number of current checkouts or a long borrowing history without navigating through multiple pages.

Sorting continues to apply across the complete set of results. When you sort your Checkouts or Borrowing History, you will return to the first page while your selected number of results per page is maintained.

Your Results per page selection applies to the current session on the tab. If you refresh the page or leave and return to the tab, the display returns to the default of 25 items per page.

Alternate subject headings display with consistent em dash formatting

Alternate subject headings now display an em dash between subfields consistently, matching the formatting of standard subject headings. Previously, the em dash only displayed between subfields for  alternate subject headings when included in the alternate subject uploaded file.

Series field hyperlinks now match only the searchable series title

Only the series title and adjacent punctuation display as a hyperlink; volume and numbering display as plain text. Previously, the entire formatted series statement, including volume and numbering was styled as a hyperlink, even though selecting it only searched the series title.

Only one hover-over knowledge card displays at a time

When hovering over author links, a card will only display for the author currently being hovered over, and any previously shown card is dismissed. Previously, hovering over consecutive author links could cause multiple cards to display and overlap each other.
 

Product website

More product information can be found here.

WorldCat Discovery events

• https://community.oclc.org/t5/worldcat-discovery-events/eb-p/worldcat-discovery-events

Support websites

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

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.