Changes to SOLO: improvements to display of records and clustering.

Over the weekend of the 28th-29th July, as a result of feedback from readers, several improvements to SOLO were implemented. The most significant of these from a musical perspective is the alteration to the way that SOLO clusters search results

Before these recent developments SOLO would cluster materials that it considered to be versions of the same work into 1 search result, regardless of their format. This is a very useful feature for books as it means that all editions of the same book are clustered together, making what might otherwise be a very long list of results appear much shorter. However, for a musical work it became a little confusing as SOLO would group both scores and sound recordings into one cluster, often making what was available somewhat unclear.

As a result of the changes that were implemented over the weekend, SOLO will now exclude early printed books (pre-1830), maps, music and audio-visual items from the clustering so that they will be visible in the main results list, separate from any clustered records.

Other changes to SOLO include the consolidation of the 'Request' and 'Locations' tabs into a single 'Find & Request' tab, which has streamlined the requesting process.

In addition to this, it is now possible to limit searches to 'Physical Resources (not online)' in the dropdown menu next to the main search box. Further information about all of the changes to SOLO can be found here.

We think the new features make searching for music scores and sound recordings much easier, do you? We'd welcome any feedback.

JMcP