Catalog Stuff - East Coast WMS User Gathering

This week I had the chance to go to the WMS East Coast User Meeting with a few others from our library.

The location was beautiful. And there were several sessions on WorldCat Discovery Services! A few takeaways from my perspective:

• Beta testing for WorldCat Discovery will officially end after the July update
• FirstSearch is supposed to go away in December 2015
• OCLC has not yet set a "sunset date" for WorldCat Local, so libraries aren't being forced to move from WorldCat Local to WorldCat Discovery.  OCLC still supports WorldCat Local but won’t be developing it.
• Apparently we're not supposed to be abbreviating WorldCat Discovery Services to WCD, but to WDS.  I'll spell it out frequently in case you don't want another set of acronyms in your life.

Upcoming developments for WorldCat Discovery 

• "Knowledge cards" will appear in a banner across the top of the list of results.  These are brief blurbs, for instance biographical info with links to our holdings by an author and about an author (scheduled for June)
• WorldCat Discovery records should have suggested citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago style (scheduled for July) & fyi they're working on getting Discovery to work with Zotero (not sure when this will happen)
• Call numbers will be added to the temporary "bookmarked" list in Discovery (scheduled for July)
• Users will be given some sort of mechanism for moving lists saved in WorldCat Local accounts over to WorldCat Discovery (scheduled for July)
• "Editions and formats" lists don't have the cue of your library name next to the edition you own, as WCL does.  That sort of cue will be added to Discovery (not sure when)
• Emails from the system - Don't include a permalink back to the record so you can check availability and other info like you can with emails from WorldCat Local.  This will be added (not sure when)
• Although some librarians continue to request a comprehensive results display, for instance brief info for a book followed by a list of all locally owned years/formats/copies, "in the short term" OCLC will continue to display only "representative sample" of what a library owns. OCLC will start displaying your most recent copy as the sample. Those catalog records won't be quite as appealing, for example after this change we'll see less cover art in the results list (not sure when).  OCLC is exploring other results display options.

Other things to expect in June

1. A new Community Center

--One user forum that will replace the WCL and WMS User Support Centers - existing centers will be available through the end of this year
--Users can create profiles that are private or are visible to other customers who subscribe to the same OCLC products
--Posting an enhancement request in the Community Center will automatically: send an email to a member of the product development team, and post the request to the community center where other members can rate and comment on it
--The listservs will continue

1. WorldShare Report Designer - Product that allows customers to create customized reports. Available as an add-on (extra subscription fee required)

I don't have details on some of the things listed here, but feel free to ask me directly if there's anything else that I've heard from OCLC or from other librarians. 

In case you'd like other perspectives from the meeting, Terry, Mary Jane, Cathy G., Marcie, and Darinlee attended. Most of them also presented!!

Remember, we do have a library staff guide to WorldCat Discovery: http://uncg.libguides.com/wcdstaff  

It has a search box pre-limited to UNCG holdings, a link to Terry's blog and more.

Thanks!
Lea