‘What’s New’ on the Library’s Catalogue
November 1 2005 heralded the launch of the ‘What’s New’ feature on the Library’s Catalogue.

This new feature can be easily found on the Library’s Catalogue Home Page located at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/. By selecting the ‘What’s New’ tab, users can search and view new items recently added to the collection, items recently moved to new collection locations, and items held in the collection for some time but not previously recorded in the Catalogue.

Users will find the look and feel is similar to the Catalogue in that items can be searched using a variety of search options and limits. From a simple results list, users can also link to specific records within the Catalogue to request an item or to conduct further searches of the collections.

The ‘What’s New’ results data is updated weekly every Tuesday morning with data rolling through a four-week update cycle before being removed from the results list.
Before the feature was launched, this information was in a somewhat hidden area of the Library’s Website and it was not directly linked to the Catalogue. As an internally developed program, it could no longer be supported by the Library’s IT staff. This new ‘What’s New’ feature is now built on a program that is used by many Voyager sites around the world.
‘What’s New’ is based on a software program developed by Michael Doran, Systems Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington . Michael is a long term user of the Voyager system and many thanks must go to Michael for making the software freely available to all Voyager libraries and making it easy to install and configure. Thanks must also go to the National Library’s IT guru Steven McPhillips for helping to sort out some small but tricky added functions.
We would appreciate your feedback on this new feature so go on, give it a go, and let us know what you think by contacting us via email ilms@nla.gov.au or telephone (02) 6262 1652.
Stephen Lacey



