WorldCat Discovery release notes, 23 October 2024

New features and enhancements

Display subject headings from additional vocabularies

With this release, subject headings from the following vocabularies are now included in the Subjects field on the item details page when your library has selected them for display.

You may select these subject heading vocabularies for display within Service Configuration > WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Local > Item Detail Settings.
•    Expand the Select data sources accordion
•    Select the Subject Heading Vocabularies tab
•    Check Other Source
•    Check Select specific sources
•    Click within the Specific Sources box to reveal the menu of vocabularies

You may search by vocabulary name or term source code or browse the list sorted alphabetically by vocabulary name. Click on the vocabulary name to select it.
Alternatively, these vocabularies will display if you check Other Source and then Turn on all 6xx with a 2nd indicator value of 7 and $2.

If you have selected specific sources, you may also configure where within the order of subject headings these vocabularies display within the Subjects field of your item details page. In Service Configuration > WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Local > Item Detail Settings > Reorder data fields, find the Subjects field configuration section in either the Promote to View or Demote from View column. Drag and drop subject heading vocabularies to control the display order.

View improved messaging when a saved search is missing one or more databases

Previously, when a search was re-run from saved searches, search history, search alerts, or a bookmark URL, and the search include one or more unavailable databases, those databases were omitted from the search. This update provides clear notifications about missing databases, ensuring users can update their saved searches for more accurate results.
Message for one or more missing databases: When a search is run and one or more (but not all) databases are missing, users will see a message listing the names of the missing databases. This allows users to quickly identify and update their saved searches to ensure accurate results.

Message for all missing databases: If a search is run and all the databases in that search are missing, an error message will display that informs the users that databases are no longer available.

•    Known Issue: When databases are not found, the user’s search is automatically rerun against the institution’s default databases, which changes the search scope. We are aiming to fix this in the November 2024 release to ensure that the saved search is run with the user's original query parameters and an informational message is displayed as "Databases selected are no longer available at your institution." This message will continue to persist until the user creates a new saved search/alert, removing any unsupported databases.

View improved location information for items in a container

In WorldCat Discovery, when viewing a record for a physical item stored within a container, the Local Holding Record (LHR) fields will now display the container's information. The following fields will reflect the container’s details instead of the individual item's information:

•    Call number

This container information will display in the following areas:

•    Search results page
•    Item detail page
•    Place hold form
•    Course reserves

This enhancement makes finding and managing physical items stored within containers easier and more reliable.
 

Group editions and formats setting is honored when searching from the Advanced search page

When users navigate to the Advanced search page and change the Search Results Display to Group editions and formats, this setting will be carried through to the search results page. Previously, Show All was the selection on the search results page for some libraries.

Citation API now supports the ability to request multiple citation styles for a single item at one time.

This allows customers to incorporate the ability to view multiple citation styles at once into their custom discovery experiences. To request multiple styles, client applications should send a comma separate list of up to five values in style parameter.

Example response snippet:

Product website

More product information can be found here.

Office hours

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

Support website(s)

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

• WorldCat Discovery support resources  
• WorldCat Discovery training
• Informatie over releases
• 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.