DiscoverE Changes, August 15 2019

During the day on Thursday August 15, the Library will make some changes to DiscoverE; it’ll look a little different, as we work to make it easier for  users to find information they need. If you encounter something that’s not working normally in DiscoverE, please contact coreserviceshelp [at] emory [dot] edu.  If you have a comment about the changes below, what you like or don’t like or another idea, we’d like to hear from you. Use our DiscoverE Feedback form.  Here’s what  changes:

Old: 

Old tabs - Details, Physical Resource, Virtual Browse, Place on Reserve, Document DeliveryNew:

(1) The tab that showed copies and volumes owned by Emory libraries and their status when you view full information on an item by clicking on its title in the results list was called “Physical Resource”.   This was confusing for some users.We’re now calling it “Locate/Request Item” because that’s what you can do in the tab – locate where physical copies or volumes are among Emory’s libraries, see their status, and (for logged in Emory users), place requests to send items at remote locations to a service desk for pickup, or recall or place a hold on an item. 

(2) Some users weren’t sure what the “Document Delivery” tab was for. It’s a service for logged in Emory users – you can request an electronic copy of an article or chapter, such as from the LSC storage facility.  So we changed the label to say that.

(3) When viewing full information on an individual item, a tab labeled “Virtual Browse” sometimes appears. This was confusing for some users.  We changed the label to “Browse Virtual Shelf” to better indicate what it does – if the record has items with call numbers, it shows other records in DiscoverE that have nearby call numbers using that classification – like books organized on a shelf, usually by subject.

(4) We changed the label on the Details tab when viewing full information on an item, to View Details, to better indicate what it lets you do.

(5) In DiscoverE’s summary availability statement in the results list, we said CHECKED OUT when something was not available for checkout, because usually that’s why it’s temporarily unavailable.

But, sometimes the item is On-Order, or Missing, or another status. CHECKED OUT isn’t accurate then and has caused confusion.  When something’s not available, if you want to see why, you can click the title in the results list and go to the Locate/Request tab – so we say that.

(6) In DiscoverE, if there are no physical or electronic copies available, there was a link to “Request via ILLiad,” the name of a product we use, but users didn’t know what that was, so to make it clear we changed the wording to “Request via Interlibrary Loan”

7.  In My Account under “Loans”, users couldn’t tell why an item could not be renewed.  We added a a “Loan status” column to give more information about the loans.