by Rita Baladad
excerpted from the OCLC Next Blog:
One WorldCat, two discovery options
Our members made it clear, as we worked on developing WorldCat Discovery, that they valued the unique capabilities of FirstSearch. Based on that feedback, we’re going to continue to provide a new version of FirstSearch, separate from WorldCat Discovery. How will these differ?
- FirstSearch. Power searching of the WorldCat and Base Package databases. Defaults to advanced search with an “unclustered” view of editions and formats.
- WorldCat Discovery. Single-search-box discovery of WorldCat, a central index of 2,300+ e-content collections and 200 million+ article records in WorldCat.org. Defaults to single search with “clustered” editions and formats in the results.
More information about key features of each service is available here in this FAQ.
Both FirstSearch and WorldCat Discovery will be accessed through a common technology infrastructure with a mobile-ready, modern interface. Access to the current version of FirstSearch will continue into at least 2017. Our plan to replace WorldCat Local with WorldCat Discovery has not changed. We are accelerating our work to add key WorldCat Local features to WorldCat Discovery
