WorldCat Discovery release notes, December 2025
Release Date: December 16, 2025
Introduction
This release of WorldCat Discovery includes the following enhancements as well as bug fixes:
- Identify Open Access records with a new visual indicator
- Improve Primary Title searching by adding a Primary Title Phrase (te=) index for anchored phrase searching
Many of these enhancements are the direct result of your feedback.
Recommended actions
For this release, we recommend that you review the following checklists and complete the relevant tasks so that you can adjust your policies and workflows and train your staff. These checklists identify updates that we have determined as significant for most institutions. We encourage you to review all of the items in the release notes to determine whether there are other items that might require additional action or follow up by your institution.
Follow-up actions
In an effort to keep your staff informed of new features and changes, you may also want to consider these items.
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The Spelling Suggestions feature is officially moving from beta to full production. This update requires no action from libraries. Spelling suggestions will continue to appear on the "no results" page, helping users discover relevant materials even when their search terms contain typos or misspellings. |
New features and enhancements
Identify Open Access records with a new visual indicator
WorldCat Discovery now makes it easier to identify open access materials directly from the search results page with a new visual indicator on the record. This enhancement also improves the accuracy of the Open Access facet by expanding its logic to include open access content from hybrid journals.
Details
Open access records will now display an open access lock icon in search results and on the item detail page. This icon includes translatable text to support all interface languages.
When viewing clustered search results, if any record within a group is open access, the open access icon will appear on the representative record.
The Open Access facet will now display the number of OA records. This applies to both WorldCat records and central index records.
A record may be identified as open access if it originates from an open access database or if one or more of the following conditions are met:
- An 856 field with subfield $7 containing a value of 0
- A 506 field with subfield $a or $f containing the value “Unrestricted online access”
- MARC 938 subfield $d, when the value indicates open access
- MARC 996 subfield $8, when the value indicates open access
If any of these conditions are met, the record will be treated as open access and included in the Open Access facet and visual indicator.
NOTE: There is a scenario where the Open Access (OA) filter may return non-open access records and incorrectly display the OA indicator when used in combination with the OCLC Control Number (no:) index.
This behavior can occur in the following scenarios:
- A user runs a search, applies the OA filter, then retains filters and performs a subsequent no: index search.
- A user runs an advanced search using the no: index and applies the OA filter.
In these scenarios, exact no: matches may take precedence over the OA filter, causing non-OA records to appear as OA in the results.
Configuration
No configuration is required.
Improve Primary Title searching by adding a Primary Title Phrase (te=) index for anchored phrase searching
WorldCat Discovery now supports anchored phrase searching for primary title index (te=) searches. This enhancement will retrieve only records with titles that exactly match your search phrase.
For example, a search for te=The Times will return records titled "The Times" but exclude broader titles like "The Times of London".
Configuration
No configuration is required.
Important links
Product website
More product information can be found here.
WorldCat Discovery events
Support websites
Include Request ID with problem reports
When reporting an issue with WorldCat Discovery, it is extremely helpful to include the Request ID. The Request ID is found at the bottom of the screen on which the issue occurred. Including this information allows us to directly trace what happened on the request we are troubleshooting.
