Latest Enhancements for WorldCat Local

New search options in the WorldCat Local service give users more access to local library data and additional ways to refine search results.

Limit to peer-reviewed content

A peer-reviewed limiter has been added to the service in response to user requests. The new limiter lets users refine searches and search results to peer-reviewed articles, e-articles, journals and e-journals in databases accessible through the WorldCat Local central index with the exception of WorldCat. The limiter will be added to WorldCat as a future enhancement.

Users can limit to peer-reviewed using the new Popular Limits section of the Advanced search screen or they can refine search results by the peer-reviewed facet under the Article format and under Content on the WorldCat Local interface.

An item’s peer-reviewed status is determined through the xISSN service, an OCLC API which harvests data including peer-reviewed status from approximately 60 sources. This list of the sources and the service are available at http://www.oclc.org/developer/services/xissn.

Search of local bibliographic data

Local data such as local subject headings, uniform titles and notes is now searchable in WorldCat Local. Since February, 2011, WorldCat Local libraries have been able to add their local data to the service through OCLC Batchload, and this rich locally-created content began to display in the interface in May. This additional data complements the full bibliographic data from the WorldCat database already available in the service and gives users more access points to their libraries’ resources.
When a library adds its local data to a WorldCat Local site, it is available only to users of that site, and will not display to other WorldCat Local library sites.

Details about providing access to local bibliographic data through WorldCat Local are provided in "Quick Reference: Local Bibliographic Data for WorldCat Local."