Concordia University of Edmonton (CUE) empowers users to discover what they need—fast

As part of the transition from a consortial ILS to a standalone OCLC WorldShare Management Services instance, Concordia University of Edmonton (CUE) refreshed its existing WorldCat Discovery configuration, enhancing the user experience for students, faculty, and staff.

OCLC services used:

• OCLC Cataloging and Metadata Subscription
• EZproxy
• FirstSearch
• WorldCat Discovery
• WorldCat Entities
• WorldShare Management Services

When Concordia University of Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) first implemented WorldCat Discovery in 1999, the expectations of users were quite different than they are today. After more than two decades, the product continues to evolve with the needs of users. OCLC's continuous investment in development of WorldCat Discovery means that new features and enhancements are designed to keep pace with the expectations of information seekers.

"Ease-of-use is our top benefit. With WorldCat Discovery being such a user-friendly platform, it's easier for us to teach students, it's easier for students to use and become familiar with, and then they're more confident using it," Jenn Laskosky, Online Services Librarian, said.

When user preferences become default settings, search accelerates

Like all libraries, Concordia University of Edmonton's (CUE) library team has had to upgrade systems and products over the years. When Jenn learned CUE was moving away from a consortial ILS to its own instance of WorldShare Management Services (WMS), she knew it was the perfect opportunity to refresh the institution's WorldCat Discovery configuration settings, as it would become the native discovery layer within WMS.

"We had the chance to make some updates, and we really love how easy it is for our users to use and navigate. That's important to us because we're trying to teach students how to use these products so the easier, the better."

Because of the wide variety of majors offered at CUE, the library team opted to customize the search filters in WorldCat Discovery, by selecting "best match" as the default sort, and then moving up the "year of publication," and "content type" filters to the top. By customizing the institution's search results to help students and other library users find exactly what they need, in their preferred format, the library has helped to accelerate the search-to-download workflow for many.

"We love the option to designate some of our own customizations. It's nice that we have that flexibility and control on our end as changes arise, but because we are a smaller library team serving quite a few people, having that added support when we need it is really important to us," Jenn said.

Urgency around users' information needs and instant access expectations

Coming from a public library earlier in her career to CUE, Jenn's observations about the information needs of academic library users can be summed up as being "urgent on demand." Students need the information now, and their assignments are due tomorrow. And this expectation only continues to grow as the integration of AI becomes ubiquitous.

"With everything moving more toward being online and the emergence of AI, we are considering how we will incorporate this new technology, responsibly," Jenn said. "With the public library, it's more straightforward, but at an academic institution, there are many other stakeholder groups we have to connect with before moving forward."

While exploring AI and other emerging developments, CUE's four librarians and five library technicians continue to provide hands-on services to the institution's more than 2,800 students and faculty, going into the classes to support access to resources.

"WorldCat Discovery is very easy for our users to use and navigate," said Jenn. "That's important to us because we're teaching students how to use these products, so the easier and more straightforward they are for them, the easier it is for us, for everybody."