OCLC is introducing search expansion toggles for news articles and book review as part of a phased approach to increasing the usability and precision of WorldCat Discovery search results for your users seeking original works and scholarly publications.  

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Search expansion toggles 

Features will include:  

  • Remove book reviews and news articles from default search scope 
  • Expand search to include news articles 
  • Expand search to include book reviews 
  • Add content expansions to your custom search boxes 

We will first introduce search expansion for news articles followed by a separate search expansion feature for book reviews.  

What this means for your library 

When OCLC activates this feature for your WorldCat Discovery: 

  • News articles are excluded from searches by default 

You may: 

  • Configure display of a search expansion toggle on search results for your users 

Within OCLC Service Configuration > WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Local > Search Settings > Search expansion settings, activate the toggle to allow users to control whether news articles appear in search results. 

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Please see the OCLC Service Configuration guide: WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Local > Search Settings > Search Expansion Settings > News Articles  

  • Configure your search box to include or exclude news articles from searches 

If you leave your current search box(es) unchanged, searches entered from them will exclude news articles by default. To replace or update your search box: 

Search Box Generator: Within OCLC Service Configuration > WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Local > Search Box Generator > Create Search Tabs, check the box for News Articles within the Expand Search section to include news articles in searches from a given search box tab. 

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Please see the OCLC Service Configuration guide: WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Local > Search Box Generator > Create Search Tabs > Expand Search 

Custom search box: To have a particular search box or search box tab already embedded in you web pages include news articles in searches by default, update the search box code so that it appends the parameter &newsArticles=on to the query string that it sends to WorldCat Discovery.  

Example: https://[yourlibrary].on.worldcat.org/external-search?queryString=milk&clusterResults=true&groupVariantRecords=false&newsArticles=on 

What this means for your users 

The following table summarizes how feature activation and your configuration choices affect your users’ experience.  

Early adopter status 

 

 

Setting within OCLC Service Configuration > Search Settings > Search expansion settings  

Search results 

 

 

Expand This Search With: News Articles toggle display  

 

Inactive 

 

 

 

 

News article services are disabled for display. 

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News articles are included in all search results. 

 

 

 

 

Not displayed

 

 

 

 

Active 

 

 

 

Allow users to control whether news articles appear in search results = OFF. 

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News articles are excluded by default. 

 

 

 

Not displayed 

 

 

 

Active 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allow users to control whether news articles appear in search results = ON. 

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News articles are excluded by default when the search is entered from: 

  • Basic Search page
  • Advanced Search page 
  • Search box tab without News Articles expansion configured  

 Toggle is defaulted to OFF. 
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 Users may toggle News Articles to ON. 

 

 

 

Active

 

 

 

 

 

Allow users to control whether news articles appear in search results = ON. 

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News articles are Included when search is entered from: 

  • Search box tab with News Articles expansion configured

 

Toggle is defaulted to ON. 
 

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Users may toggle News Articles to OFF. 

 

Please see WorldCat Discovery Help> Filter and refine search results>Expand This Search With> Expand search wit...