Just Different
- WorldCat Local has integration of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) concepts in the user interface
- WorldCat Local integrates article level metadata into the "OPAC"
Gains
Item | Notes |
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spelling corrections | Some misspellings are handled gracefully. Example: "No results match your search for 'shakesperre'. Did you mean shakespeare"? |
initial article searches work | No more 0 hits when a patron searches for a title and include "the" or "an" or "a". |
integration of Voyager, Borrow Direct, and WorldCat collections into a seamless delivery system | WCL is a major leap forward in reducing the number of unique discovery platforms our patrons are required to search. |
lists | Greatly improved functionality over the Voyager book bag |
personalization features | WCL allows the patron to tag and review items and easily integrate them into other popular services such as Facebook and De.licio.us |
integration with Amazon | Seamless integration with buying options in Amazon. The current implementation is flawed, however, in that it produces links to Amazon when they should not be present. For example, manuscript holdings also display a link to Amazon. OCLC is actively working to improve the buy options in WCL. |
integration with Google books | Very, very nice. Seamless integration with Google Books. When a book is available in Google, WCL displays a "Google Preview" button. |
cover art | Nice, Amazon-like integration of cover art. |
facets | Facets bring out more of the metadata. |
user centered design, modern user interface | Makes it easy to move from the open Web into WCL and back out to other systems like Amazon and Google books. |
simple search box | Easy and forgiving. |
includes reviews from Amazon and other sources | Reviews are pulled in and integrated into the record display |
includes table of contents | Table of contents links are clearly distinguished from links to the full text. |
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Losses
Item | Notes | Voyager specific problem? | Fix expected in 2009? | |
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eserials holdings are not complete | OCLC and Serials Solutions are having discussions about how to better transfer our eserials holdings. Right now all titles with an ISSN that OCLC can match are represented in WCL. This includes the top 20,000 titles. | no | yes | |
no unit location limit | We are working with OCLC to implement "Local Holdings Records". After we load our local holdings OCLC will add a feature to allow patrons and staff to restrict results to a given campus library branch. | no | yes | |
rare and manuscript copy specific information is absent | OCLC is working on adding copy specific information to WorldCat as part of their Local Holdings records project. There has been some progress along these lines. OCLC will now accept updates to records for unique manuscript collections in batch. | no | maybe | |
no call number searching or browsing | OCLC has stated no plans to make these features available. (Perhaps they will reconsider after they get their Local Holdings Records project off the ground.) | no | no | |
current serial issues do not display | The "recent issues" data in our public catalog is being pulled from the acquisitions client's serials check-in record. Because it's not bibliographic data in a format OCLC's systems can capture, the information remains in Voyager exclusively. | yes | no | |
uniform title searching only partially implemented |
| no | Probably. OCLC seems now to recognize that there is a problem because they have heard this complaint from several libraries. | |
left anchored searching absent | This is perhaps linked to the problems we are having trying to search on uniform titles. It is a conscious design decision on OCLC's part. | no | no | |
it is not possible to scan availability across a result set | Given that WCL retrieves circ status when the full record is displayed, there is no scalable way to show the circ status for an entire result set | no | no | |
some proprietary ebook record sets are not in WorldCat due to licensing restrictions | Our latest estimate is that there are some 107,000 titles missing. OCLC is working on these, but the pace is slow. The new Springer ebooks are not represented, for example. | no | yes | |
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