Over the past six months, we’ve been busy making the CERN Library Catalogue even better, and we can’t wait to share all the exciting updates with you.

All these improvements have been designed and implemented in close collaboration with our colleagues from the CERN Library.

News for the patrons

CERN Maps integration

Thanks to newly implemented CERN Maps integration, you can now precisely locate where a book’s shelf is within the library, making it easier than ever to find them:

A big thank you to the CERN Maps team for the successful collaboration, which made it possible.

Self-Checkout

We’re introducing self-checkout! Soon, you will be able to check out books all by yourself without requiring a librarian at the desk, by using the new in-browser barcode scanner from your mobile phone.

Other user interface and user experience improvements:

  • Books’ subtitles are now visible on the search results page.
  • The opening hours page now includes a link to Library location on CERN Maps.

Moving on to the other updates…

We have worked extensively on improving the search and content display:

Edition, publication year, and volume are now visible on book titles.

We’ve added a “More on this subject” section to highlight related books.

We have improved search capabilities to provide more accurate results:

  • Accurate results for searching without accents and special characters for books with accented letters or special characters.
  • Better search results with less ambiguity.

And guess what? You can now find and access audiobooks and online video courses in the catalogue!

For librarians

Bulk import for new content

Librarians are now able to bulk import audiobooks and online video courses from external providers.

The bulk importer navigation is now improved as well as document matching, which helps to reduce false duplicates and keep the catalogue clean when importing.

Library management

Interlibrary loans are now easily accessible in the back-office. Loan management is now easier, thanks to integration of closure dates (bank holidays, etc.) to all calendars displayed when choosing the start date of a loan. We’ve also improved on several navigation elements, making important metadata mandatory and added more metadata to better describe a book.

Looking Ahead

Our focus has been on making it easier to find and access books and other resources available in the CERN Library Catalogue, by improving how books are managed and displayed, enhancing checkout and search capabilities.

We hope that you will enjoy all these new features!