New Year News - change to default sort order within clustered search results, inter-library loan price rise, opening hours

Happy New Year! Hope you all had a lovely Christmas break! The library is now open again for 2012.

A few pieces of news for the new year: 

Change to default sort order within clustered search results

This morning, the Bodleian Libraries have implemented the first stage of a plan to improve the display of records in SOLO with clusters of versions (where SOLO has grouped together ‘versions’ of the same work). To achieve this, the default sort order for search results within clusters will be changed to relevance rather than date-newest. If you prefer to see your results in date order you can still do so – please use the sort option at the top of the results screen.

While clustering is beneficial to and highly valued by a large number of readers, it can cause problems for others, particularly where searching for very specific editions or antiquarian/non-book material. The long-term aim is to exclude certain categories of material from clustering, which will solve the small number of problematic cases while retaining the benefits of clustering for the majority of searches and readers. 

The decision to retain clustering in SOLO and work to improve it was taken following extensive consultation and user testing. The change to sort order within clusters is a first step to mitigate against some of the major problems caused by clustering while we work to develop an improved solution for everyone.

Inter-library loan price rises

The January 2012  ILL price increase has now been implemented. 

This represents an annual increase since the charges were last revised in January 2012, and are in line with a recommendation that was passed by the Curators to apply a 25p annual increase to our charges for Inter-library loans and document supply.

The ILL charge increases are as follows:

• Loan, photocopy, or delivery of an item by secure electronic delivery for University members from £4.50 to £4.75          
• Urgent requests for University members from £10.50 to £10.75 
• Worldwide searches for University members from £12.50 to £12.75.

The full revised price list can be found on the Bodleian website at: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/services/ill/prices

After this price rise, the annual price increase will take place in line with the beginning of the budget year so there will be a further rise of 25p from August 2012.

Saturday opening Hilary Term

The VHL will be open on Saturdays throughout Hilary Term (10am-2pm), from 14th January - 10th March.