WorldShare Circulation release notes, May 2025
Release Date: May 19, 2025
Introduction
This release of WorldShare Circulation provides new features and enhancements in addition to bug fixes. These features will help you manage more complex workflows, including:
- Ability to configure Automatic/Proactive Recalls
- Next-Generation Notifications:
- Recall Notice
- Recall Due Date Reminder
- Recall Overdue Notice
- Automatic Renewal Failure
- Digby News: Join the Digby open beta and the new Digby Community Center
- Integration of Discover Items - Advanced Bibliographic Search into Circulation
- Bug fixes and performance enhancements
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.
Help documentation for Next-Generation Notifications
We have started to roll out groups of new notifications with each release and this will continue for the next several months. To help you and your staff get to know the advantages of these communication tools and how to use them, we have put together several resources in the NGN section (sign-in required) of the WMS Circulation Community Center site. We will continue to update these resources as new notifications roll out. These resources serve as a supplement to the updated information on Next-Generation Notifications in WorldShare Circulation help documentation.
Administrative actions
These items require immediate action or decisions.
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Retirement: WMS Collection Management API (1 April 2026) The WMS Collection Management API will be sunset 1 April 2026. Please review the Collection Management API transition resources to learn how to migrate to the Metadata API, which is much more modern, flexible, and robust. We acknowledge that a common use case for the WMS Collection Management API has been a spine label printing solution. This feature is available via the Label Print Lists functionality within Record Manager, WMS Circulation or WMS Acquisitions. Check this link for the most up-to-date information about the retirement of the WMS Collection Management API. If you have questions or concerns about how this change will impact you, please contact support@oclc.org. |
Follow-up actions
In an effort to keep your staff informed of new features and changes, you may also want to consider these items.
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New features and enhancements
Automatic/Proactive Recalls
Institutions now have the ability to configure the system at the loan policy level to automatically recall items that are needed to fulfill holds.
If configured, a background process will automatically recall items that are needed fo fulfill hold requests. The proactive process will identify all loaned items able to fulfill a request and recall the most appropriate item. Overdue and Long Overdue items will not be considered for Automatic Recall. The fulfillment process is now as easy and transparent as possible for requesting patrons and for patrons with items on loan. You are able to choose whether to make use of this proactive functionality.
Recall Configuration
Recall functionality for both manual and proactive recalls is configured in Service Configuration on Loan Policy screens. Under Recalls, where you can configure your Recall Period and apply a Recall Due Date Adjustment, you can now also choose whether or not to activate Proactive Recalls.
Note: The current recall functionality in WorldCat Discovery will be retired in June 2025. Libraries can choose to disable it now or take no action and have it automatically removed with the June release. The Circulation Staff UI will still have the ability to manually recall items with no changes.
Visit Loan Policy, Recalls for additional information and workflows.
Recall Notifications
You can now configure new recall-related notifications to improve communication with your patrons
Through these notifications, you can provide patrons with essential information about their items that have been recalled. Patrons will know when an item will be due, if a due date has changed and what it has changed to, why an item's due date was changed, if the system will attempt to automatically renew the item or not, and what type of overdue penalties will apply to a recalled item. Note that the legacy Recall Notification has now turned into 4 more granular notifications, 3 of which are specific communications related to recalled items and 1 notification regarding the failure of automatic renewals.
Recall Notice
This is a notification that informs patrons about an item that has been recalled. It is a single notification automatically emailed as soon as an item is recalled. A template is required to be created for this notification under Loans on the Next Generation Notifications page in Service Configuration. The template is then assigned by Loan Policy in Service Configuration.
Legacy notification that this notification replaces: Recall Notification
Sample Recall Notice:
Visit Recall Notice for additional information and workflows.
Recall Due Date Reminder
This notification reminds patrons of the due date for recalled items. Reminders are emailed at configurable intervals before the due date of recalled items, ensuring patrons have ample time to return the items. This is an automatic notification that will be sent based on the schedule set by the library staff. A template is required to be created for this notification under Loans on the Next-Generation Notifications page in Service Configuration. The template is then assigned by Loan Policy in Service Configuration. This is also where the schedule for the notifications is set by library staff.
Legacy notification that this notification replaces: Recall Notification
Sample Loan Due Date Reminder Notification:
Visit Recall Due Date Reminder for additional information and workflows.
Recall Overdue Notice
This is a notification that informs patrons about recalled items that have become overdue. These notifications are emailed after recalled items become overdue, based on the schedule specified by library staff. This schedule can optionally include a repeating reminder notification which will be sent periodically while recalled items remain overdue. A template is required to be created for this notification under Loans on the Next-Generation Notifications page in Service Configuration. The template is then assigned by Loan Policy in Service Configuration. This is also where the schedule for the notifications is set by library staff.
Legacy notification that this notification replaces: Recall Notification
Sample Recall Overdue Notice:
Visit Recall Overdue Notice for additional information and workflows.
Automatic Renewal Failure Notification
This notification informs patrons when an automatic renewal fails. It is a single notification automatically emailed as soon as an item fails to automatically renew. A template is required to be created for this notification under Loans on the Next Generation Notifications page in Service Configuration. The template is then assigned by Loan Policy in Service Configuration.
Legacy notification that this notification replaces: Recall Notification
Sample Automatic Renewal Failure Notification:
Visit Automatic Renewal Failure Notification for additional information and workflows.
Digby - Join the open beta and explore the new Digby Community Center space
Beta for Digby Read Shelf + Inventory
OCLC invites you to participate in the open beta for Digby’s new Read Shelf + Inventory mode, a new way to speed up your library workflow. Using this new feature, when you confirm an item's location on the shelf, the item's Last Inventoried date and Inventoried Count is automatically updated in WMS. To join the beta, see our announcement (sign-in required) on the new Digby space in the Community Center.
Digby Space in the Community Center
We have created a new Digby space in the Community Center (sign-in required), making it easier for you to join discussions and provide feedback specifically on Digby, the app that makes it easy for your student workers, volunteers, and staff to handle a range of common library tasks from reshelving items to basic inventory.
Integration of Discover Items - Advanced Bibliographic Search into Circulation
In the WMS Circulation Staff UI, you now have more options for searching by clicking on Advanced Search from the left sidebar and applying the following parameters to your search: Scope, Indices, Format, Languages, Years, Source of Cataloging, and Language(s) of Cataloging. You can also limit your search results to Abbreviated-level records.
Visit Discover Items, Advanced Search for additional information and workflows.
Bug fixes
Lowercase alphabetical values are now supported in ZFL for Borrowing ISILS
Users are now able to include lowercase alphabet characters when inputting Borrower ISILS in ZFL. Previously, only uppercase alphabet characters were supported.
Replacement fees will now always use the institution's currency
As a reminder, if an LHR has multiple replacement fees, the system will apply fees based on the policies configured on the Long Overdue and Lost items screen. Here, you can choose to prioritize the cost listed in the Item Record or the cost listed by Media Type on the Replacement Costs screen. If the prioritized type of fee is not available, the system will fall back to the other choice and if no fees are found, there will be no fee charged. This is existing behaviour and the system will continue to operate this way but now, it will only consider/raise fees in your institution's currency. For example, if you have chosen to first use the cost listed in the Item Record but that is not in your institution's currency, the system will look at the Replacement Costs screen and use the fee listed for the item's media type.
Known issues
See the Known Issues page.
Important links
Post-release sessions
To help you become familiar with the new features, enhancements, and improvements included in this release, WMS Circulation has planned quarterly office hours. The first session is on June 5, 2025 and you can register through the Community Center. Please note the session time zones when registering. The sessions will be recorded and archived for future viewing on the OCLC Community Center. Please register, even if you cannot attend, to receive a link to the recorded session.
Support website(s)
Support information for this product and related products can be found at: