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OCLC Support

Why am I seeing View eBook links on numerous records with the same title - even when we don't hold them ?

Symptom
  • This e-book title appears in only one Collection, that we have selected and the record with the OCN shows the View-eBook link and held by our Library as expected. However there are numerous records with the same title but with different OCNs, that are now all appearing with the View eBook link to this one title, we have in Collection Manager and are not held by our library, but are held by Libraries Worldwide.
Applies to
  • WorldCat Discovery  
Resolution

WorldCat Knowledge base queries uses the title, ISSN, ISBN, and Title to retrieve information. If a print book has e-access, we will show the link.

The links appear because OCLC has found a match between the Title/ISBN/ISSN in WorldCat and the library’s knowledge base. We do not use your holdings or the format in this matching process. So, unfortunately it is not possible to just have links appear on e-formats only.

If enough match points are made :  title, author, ISBN, etc. it will surface the view eBook link on all related titles, even the ones you don't have holdings on. This is working as designed and is deliberate, as its to help your users. For example, if the user happens to click on the one you don't hold, the user can still get to the resource because the library does have access to it (though just on a different bib record).

Note:

  • The best option to avoid this issue, is to leave the  Grouped editions ticked in the filter, when conducting searches
    • As then you will just see one result due to the library and relevance sort
    • It will appear higher in the results list, than if it was just held by other libraries
    • It will be the one most relevant or held by your library 
    • If you untick this Grouped editions - you will see your View eBook links on all matching titles, even if you do not hold them
       
  • If after looking at the different records, you believe there are more records than there should be for this title (seem like many duplicates), you can put in a Change Request via Record Manager and request duplicates are removed
Page ID
21874