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John Cabot University

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Photo of the library at John Cabot University
Photo courtesy of John Cabot University

"The major feature of WorldCat Discovery as a discovery tool is the global scale in which this service can help librarians. This type of tool has long been a dream of librarians and is now available and is particularly suitable for our institution."

Elisabetta Morani
Head Librarian, John Cabot University

Librarians at John Cabot University were struggling to adapt to the evolving needs and requests of their users and the amount of new electronic resources available. They also struggled to grant remote access to their users. They found that they were having to adapt and reinvent a lot of software workarounds to get by. "We ran into various problems, such as granting access to our resources and the tools we used to inform our users ... resulting in desperation, inconsistencies and difficult communications, meaning users did not receive the proper message," said Elisabetta Morani, Head Librarian at John Cabot University. Library users and staff often had to search multiple databases individually to find the resources they required.

WorldCat Discovery allowed the library to integrate the WorldCat® knowledge base into its catalog. This allowed users to access digital resources more quickly and easily. The librarians customized their WorldCat Discovery interface, so it was in keeping with the colors of the John Cabot University website. They also added links to other library webpages, so users could continue to find the university and library resources they needed. The library was also able to grant easy remote access to resources in the catalog. "The fact that the remote access product that we use is EZproxy and it is integrated into the system, helps a lot too," Elisabetta said.

"The power of WorldCat as an information retrieval tool is enormous."

Even though John Cabot University only recently implemented WorldCat Discovery, librarians are already noticing decreases in the use of their old OPAC catalog and increases in the use of WorldCat Discovery. They have also seen an increase in interlibrary loan requests now that users have far greater visibility into other libraries' collections.

"What are the benefits of WorldCat Discovery? We try to sell it as Google for libraries!" Elisabetta explained. "Discoverability is increased by the enriched content, and students are exposed to more resources, even those we don't have. Additionally, we have uniform electronic resource management procedures and simplified acquisitions, meaning we avoid duplicated searches on e-book platforms when we order."

Services used by John Cabot University

WorldCat Discovery

EZproxy

Map showing locaation of John Cabot University

Library at a glance

  • Founded in 1972
  • Has more than 1,000 students from around the world
  • Has holdings of more than 32,000 resources

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