OPACs: Major Melvyl Enhancements Coming in January

From the California Digital Library Blog:
Two exciting new features enhancing Melvyl will be turned on in Melvyl beginning this January: View Now and Central Index…OPS [UC Heads of Public Schools] recommended to the new Melvyl Advisory Group (MAG) that these be activated in a pilot phase from January through June 2012.
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The “View Now” link on the search results page enables users to identify and connect to full text books and documents. [Our Emphasis] The feature will be turned on for freely available content in Melvyl. When an item such as a HathiTrust full text book is available, Melvyl users will see an active “View Now” link on the search results page, without needing to go to the detailed record. If full text is NOT available, the link will be grayed out.
In addition to HathiTrust materials, the View Now links will be activated for free resources in the following categories: .gov/.edu documents and Internet Archive/Project Gutenberg items.
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WorldCat Local (WCL) provides the ability to add licensed vendor databases to what is known as a “Central Index”. If an institution subscribes to the index, users can see the records for that vendor.
The complete blog post includes several screenshots and a list of the databases that will be available for via the “Central Index.”

Filed under: Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Libraries, Patrons and Users, Publishing