WorldShare Circulation release notes, April 2025
Release Date: April 27, 2025
Introduction
This release of WorldShare Circulation provides several new features and enhancements:
- Ability to apply Restricted Loan due dates and Restricted Loan Overdue policies for items with a Hold Queue
- Next-Generation Notifications:
- Restricted Loan Due Date Reminder and Restricted Loan Overdue Notice
- Ability to configure a staff email address for undeliverable Next-Generation Notices
- Enhancements to Temporary Item Searching in Circulation
- Continuation of Modernized Discover Pages and Search Dialogs
- SIP2 Enhancement: Title and Bibliographic information provided for title level hold requests
- Digby News: Join the Digby open beta and the new Digby Community Center
- 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
Ability to Apply Restricted Due Dates to Items with a Hold Queue
When checking out an item to a patron, the system can determine if the item is needed to fulfill any pending holds in the queue. If so, the loan period can be limited to speed up the fulfillment process for the next patron.
This option allows you to apply a due date that is more strict than the regular loan period so that an item can move through the holds queue and be shared by a greater number of people. Once this option is configured, the system will automatically determine if an item should be restricted at checkout. The Restricted status for the affected items will then show in both My Account and the Staff UI. Items on Restricted loan are not elibile for automatic renewal. Renewals of Restricted loans require a staff override and once an item is renewed, it transitions to a regular loan.
The Restricted loan option is configured on the Loan Policy screen:
When restricted loans become overdue, there are specific Restricted loan Overdue penalties that are configured on the Loan Policy screen under Overdue Loans:
Notifications that remind the patron of the Restricted Loan Due Date and that alert the patron to a Restricted loan becoming overdue are available for configuration and described below.
Visit Loan Policy for additional information and workflows.
Next-Generation Notifications for Restricted Loans
There are two new notifications associated with restricted loan items. Below are descriptions, along with sample messages.
Restricted Loan Due Date Reminder
This is a reminder notifying patrons that a restricted loan is due soon. Reminders are emailed at configurable intervals before the due date, ensuring patrons have ample time to return their 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.
This is a net new notification to be used with the configuration of restricted loans.
Sample Restricted Loan Due Date Reminder:
Visit Restricted Loan Due Date Reminder for additional information and workflows.
Restricted Loan Overdue Notice
This is a notification that informs patrons about restricted loan items that have become overdue. These notifications are emailed after loans 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 the restricted loan remains 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.
This is a net new notification to be used with the configuration of restricted loans.
Sample Restricted Loan Overdue notification:
Visit Restricted Loan Overdue Notice for additional information and workflows.
Setting up and Configuring the Notifications for Restricted Loans
As with the four loan notifications that were released in March 2025, you will configure Restricted Loan notifications on the Next-Generation Notifications page in Service Configuration. If you have previously set General Settings to be applied to notification templates, you can use existing settings, edit them, or add to them. For additional information on General Settings, see the General Settings Section of WorldShare Circulation help documentation. After you have completed General Settings, you will need to create templates for each notification.
Click on Loans under Templates on the Next-Generation Notifications screen and then Create Template to create the templates for Restricted Loan Due Date Reminder and Restricted Loan Overdue Notice.
Be sure to complete the required sections of each template (Name, Subject, and Loan Details) and include any optional information, such as, Header/Footer, Logo, Custom Messages, and Web Links. See the Templates section of WorldShare Circulation help documentation for additional information on constructing each template.
Policy Settings
Once created and complete, each notification template must be applied to specific loan policies.
This is where Email reply-to addresses and Proxy borrowing settings are configured.
This is also where the Scheduling of notification series is set. Through scheduling, libraries can configure whether to honor open hours, and the timing and frequency of reminders.
These notifications will only be sent out for items with restricted due dates.
Specific details and instructions about configuring notification templates, applying them to policies, and scheduling each type of notification are available below:
Ability to configure a staff email address for undeliverable Next-Generation Notifications
A staff email address can be set up to receive copies of notifications that failed to send to patrons due to missing or incorrect email addresses
You can choose to set up a staff email address in Service Configuration in the Next-Generation Notifications screen, under General Settings. Click on "Manage error handling options" to enable this option and provide a staff email address.
Visit Manage error handling options for additional information and workflows.
Improvements to Temporary Item Searching in Circulation
Enhancements have been made when searching for temporary items in the Discover Items portion of the Staff UI. This includes additional search indexes (Call Number and Notes) and additional information on the Search Results page (Owning Institution, Call Number, Type/Format, and Item Status.)
Visit Discover items for additional information and workflows.
Continuation of Modernized Discover Items Pages and Search Dialogs
Additional pages and search dialogs have been updated to the modernized design. The New Discover Items Search Dialog and Full Record Details have been integrated in Circulation.
SIP2 Enhancement: Title and Bibliographic information provided for title level hold requests
Patrons using SIP2 can now see title and bibliographic information for their pending hold requests for both title and item level holds. This will serve as a reminder to patrons of the items they have already requested. Institutions can enable this feature in Service Configuration>Integrations>SIP2 Configuration.
Visit SIP2 Configuration 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.
Bug fixes and Performance Improvements
Many of these enhancements are the direct result of your feedback.
New entries in Collection Type Policy can now be Saved
You would sometimes receive an error message when trying to save a new record in Collection Type Policy. Now, all records can be saved as expected.
Successful hold requests no longer show intermittent errors
Some hold requests that were successful were showing an error in Discovery that made them look unsuccessful. Now, no successful hold requests are showing errors.
Hold receipts are now showing all relevant information
Some hold receipts were not showing the hold expiry date. Now all hold receipts are showing all relevant information, including hold expiry dates.
Known issues
Discovery Framework - The Bib Search Dialog currently shows two scroll bars on the right side of the screen. This does not impact usability.
Discovery Framework - The tooltip in the Bib Search Dialog is slightly misaligned. This does not impact usability.
To track other Known Issues, see the Known Issues page.
Important links
Support website(s)
Support information for this product and related products can be found at: