Snapshot Discussion: Next Steps for Patrons

Question

What next steps are campuses encouraging patrons do when they don't find what they're looking for?

Quick Answer

Everyone agrees this is a problem but no one has a really good answer for this question. However, if someone finds a good solution, please bring it back to the group.

Discussion Summary

UCSC has been thinking about this since implementing Primo. There’s not a lot of consistency, even from staff, when people don’t find what they’re looking for in their initial search. Possible options: expanding search, go to worldcat, etc. It’s a complicated Choose Your Own Adventure. It would be better for patrons to request from Primo, since it will fill in some of the metadata. However, they are instead getting referrals to the manual ILL form. Experimented with Fetch Item form and it runs into the same problems as the manual form. Putting in a title doesn’t retrieve a record as often as they’d like. There are also limitations around books. It would be nice if CDI materials be incorporated into Worldcat profile but that doesn’t seem to exist.

Everyone feels like they’re in a similar situation to UCSC.

UCLA ILL people feel the metadata from the WorldCat scope isn’t sufficient.

UCB doesn’t see a high usage of WorldCat. They had been encouraging people to use a blank ILL form when something isn’t available. However, they learned that this bypasses the AFN completely and goes straight to VDX. Jackie has generated a list of searches that generated zero Primo VE results and will be talking about that more with their group.

UCSF doesn’t have a Worldcat Scope and uses worldcat.org instead, though they don’t know how much it’s used.

UCB reference doesn’t like the WorldCat Discovery interface and prefer worldcat.org. They’re thinking about using a link to worldcat.org instead of the scope.