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OCLC Support

Why is an item my library holds not showing as held in Discovery?

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Symptom

  • When searching for a title held by your library, record may say "At other libraries worldwide"
  • The item doesn't surface in a search filtered by the library, but does appear when scoped to Libraries Worldwide
  • You get an error message that says "No records found."

Applies to

  • WorldCat Discovery
  • WorldShare Record Manager
  • WorldShare Collection Manager

Resolution

Record Manager holdings:

  • For physical items with an LHR, confirm that the LHR is on the record you are expecting and does not have a validation error. If it does, correct the error and re-save the LHR.
  • If it doesn't have a validation error, momentary outages can cause holdings to be partially complete. Simply re-saving the LHR without making changes usually resolves this when it happens.
  • Check the LHR for a 035 tag that is pointing to a different OCN. If one is there, delete the 035 and re-save.
  • If the item is an article that is found in Worldcat.org (i.e. you can find the article title in Record Manager), and you have an LHR attached to the article record, make sure that there isn't an ISSN in the bib record in Record Manager. Discovery will try and match to the ISSN before it matches on the OCLC Number in this case. Check the 040 field and the 773 field.

Collection Manager holdings:

  • Ensure the title is selected in Collection Manager and that OCLC number listed in the knowledge base title entry matches the OCLC number of the Discovery record.
  • View the collection's Holdings and MARC Records settings, and ensure it is set to Maintain WorldCat holdings.
  • Holdings added via the WorldCat knowledge base usually take 24-48 hours to complete. If you just selected a title in the WorldCat knowledge base this is the most likely reason the holding is not appearing.
  • An ISSN is required in order for Collection Manager to set holdings on article records in Discovery. However, ISSNs are not always present in central index records and not all sources even have ISSNs. If an ISSN is not present in the reported record, holdings will not show. You may contact OCLC Support in this case, but please note that for central index records, OCLC relies on data from third party data providers. OCLC is contractually unable to alter this data, but can ask the data providers if they can provide ISSNs.
  • Check Publication types that surface links, set WorldCat holdings, and output records to ensure that you have the correct coverage depth selected to set a holding.

If none of the above resolve the issue and the holding does not appear within a few days, try the following steps:

To attempt to correct this, try making a small change to the LHR (like adding a note) and saving the LHR. You can then remove the change you made and save the LHR again. If after 15 minutes that doesn't correct the item display, please contact OCLC Support and provide the following:

  • The OCLC number of the record(s)
  • A link to the search in WorldCat Discovery
  • A full-page screenshot of the issue

Additional Information

More on how the WorldCat knowledge base sets holdings is available. Information on how to set holdings on titles using WorldShare Record Manager is also available.

Page ID
50401