Faster search results

You might not notice it when doing a focused search but when doing a general search of all catalogs, the NHAIS ILL System now completes its searching faster (network conditions permitting). Searches that had regularly been taking 40 or sometimes 60 seconds to complete are now usually finished in 15 to 20 seconds. This marks a return to how searching functioned prior to some changes that were made in the ILL program late last year.

As you watch the number of search resources count down (upper right of screen), you may notice the numbers jump much faster than they did between last December and last month. Instead of seeing the count change one Z-target at a time (98, 97, 96, 95...) you should see it skip along as it processes more results simultaneously.

Remember that for searches with a large results set you need to click the Add to Results button to see what was found after the initial screen of results. After you've clicked Add to Results, the "Additional results are now included" message that follows will disappear on its own after a few seconds or you can click OK to make it go away now.

Do you really need to wait for those extra search results to show up? It depends. For an obscure title or author or to see everything on a particular subject, you would do well to wait to see those additional results. If you see the very thing you're looking for on that initial screen of search results, though, you can create a request from that record even if there are few or no holdings attached to it. Once your request is submitted, SHAREit does a behind-the-scenes search to determine which libraries will be on the lender list.

Multi-copy requests are different in that the lender list is built before you submit the request but you can still create the multi-copy request from a record found on the initial screen of search results as long as you wait for the "Multi-Copy lender list build is complete" message before submitting the request.