Library and Archives Canada Announces Launch of “Collection Search” (Beta)

UPDATE February 1, 2018 Along with the new Library and Archives Canada Collections Beta (Links at the Bottom of this Post) LAC is Also Announcing the Launch of Voila, Canada’s New National Union Catalogue:

LAC has been working with the non-profit cooperative OCLC, a leader in library services, to implement a leading-edge library management system that will make the published heritage of our country more visible than ever before, and will share Canada’s culture and knowledge with the world.
The launch of Voilà, a milestone for LAC in its library renewal project, marks the completion of the migration of the national union catalogue holdings from AMICUS to OCLC. Starting today, LAC invites members of the Canadian library community to use Voilà.
The new catalogue offers an intuitive interface with modern features for searching published materials located in hundreds of libraries across Canada that subscribe to OCLC services, or had their holdings migrated from AMICUS to OCLC. LAC will start enriching Voilà to provide public access to its own holdings later this year.

See Also: Questions and Answers for Canadian Libraries in light of LAC’s Contract with OCLC (2017; Updated February 2018)
Learn More

• Voila Launch Announcement From OCLC (February 2, 2018)

• From LAC: A New Library Management System to Share Canada’s Published Documentary Heritage  (December 12, 2017)

• Library and Archives Canada Moving National Union Catalogue to WorldCat, Other Services to WMS (April 14, 2017)
  Note: The original proposal from Library and Archives Canada to move to WorldCat/WMS was made nearly four years ago (April 2, 2014). Here are several infoDOCKET posts from that period of time.

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ORIGINAL POST (January 27, 2018)
From Library and Archives Canada:

The beta version [of Collection Search] is under construction and will be for a while, but once fully developed, this new search engine will allow users to search all of the collections available to the public at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) from one starting point. This tool will eventually search more than a hundred stand-alone databases currently available on our website from a single search box. As well, this completely redesigned tool features best practices from research experiences at LAC.
Some functions, like the advanced search and the details fields of some archival records, are not available at this time. These capabilities are still being developed, and we will add them as they are completed.
[Clip]
New capabilities in Collection Search^BETA

• Refine your search more easily on the results page by using the tabs and the filters
• Order your results by relevance, title (A-Z / Z-A) or date (ascending or descending)
• It is now possible to adjust the number of results displayed on your results page (10, 25, 50 or 100 results)
• You can download a document with your search results with up to 1000 results in the following formats : HTML, PDF, CSV, XML, JSON
• You can print your search results
• Search results with one or many digital images will present these images in a carrousel just above the title of the record. You can click on them to preview them right from the search results page, or click the title to navigate to the record itself
• Audio-visual items from our collection that are published on the LAC YouTube page will now have the YouTube link connected to the item in Collection Search^BETA
• Navigation between the pages of your search results is now optimized to improve access to more results.
• Preview a larger version of the images in a carrousel by clicking to open the image previewer

Direct to Collection Search
Learn More About LAC Collection Search Beta

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Patrons and Users, Video Recordings