WorldShare Management Services: FAQ

When your campus IT department renews or replaces the SAML security certificate for the campus login system (Identity Provider/IdP), OCLC services like WMS, Discovery, and ILL need to recognize the new certificate. Without this update, library staff and patrons may be unable to sign in through single sign-on (SSO).

Here’s what to do:

• Send OCLC Support the updated IdP metadata, and note the expiration date of the old certificate. You can use the Zendesk portal, available for login or account setup at https://help.oclc.org/Librarian_Toolbox/Contact_OCLC_Support, or email OCLC Support at support@oclc.org.

• If your library uses EZproxy: your EZproxy server will also need updates. See OCLC documentation:

  • Updating EZproxy when SSO certificates are renewed

  • Generating metadata for SAML connection to EZproxy

  • SAML authentication in EZproxy

• If your library uses OpenAthens: open a request through EBSCO Connect at https://connect.ebsco.com/ or ask campus IT to update your connector in OpenAthens Admin at https://admin.openathens.net. OpenAthens documentation is available here: https://docs.openathens.net/libraries/what-to-do-when-a-certificate-changes

Timeline tip: Begin this process 2–3 weeks before the certificate expires to give IT and support providers enough time to complete the update without service disruption.

What you should do as library staff: Coordinate with your IT department to ensure OCLC (and, if applicable, EZproxy or OpenAthens support) receives the updated certificate information before the old one expires.

• Submit separate tickets: one for WMS/Discovery/ILL (OCLC Support), and a separate ticket for your authentication service (EZproxy via OCLC Support, or OpenAthens via EBSCO Connect). Opening separate tickets with OCLC Support is recommended so each ticket is routed correctly.

EBSCO and OCLC search interfaces are unlikely to return the same number of results. EBSCO’s EDS includes proprietary metadata and links to its own research content, while OCLC Discovery searches WorldCat Central Index and vendor-shared metadata available for Discovery search. On top of that, metadata sharing between platforms — especially with EBSCO’s restrictions — has to be adapted to each system’s unique architecture. Only a system identical to EDS, with the same search algorithms and base search indexes would return the same results.

Also, Discovery excludes “remote database” results from the main count. You have to link out of Discovery to see the EBSCO results, so they are included in the main count in EDS, along with other content not available in OCLC Discovery. Interestingly, if you click into a remote database from the Discovery remote database tray, the EBSCO counts there are fairly accurate for individual databases. It’s only when EDS runs a full-system search across all of its proprietary content and metadata that the numbers rise so sharply.

The key takeaway is that both systems surface a strong set of relevant, accessible results. OCLC Discovery is designed to give users a manageable set of results, while EDS emphasizes higher counts and more granular access to its own or partnered content. The difference is structural, not an indication that one system is more accurate. They're just different.

Oxford University Press (OUP), Cambridge University Press (CUP), and Springer Nature have transitioned to COUNTER Release 5.1 (R5.1) for usage reporting. Please note the following for SUSHI Fetch and COUNTER Usage Reports:

• COUNTER 5 (R5) statistics remain available for reports covering March 2025 and earlier for OUP and Cambridge. The R5 end date was December 2025 for Springer.
• COUNTER 5.1 (R5.1) statistics are available for reports covering January 2025 and later.

• For January–March 2025, libraries may access reports in either R5 or R5.1 for Cambridge and OUP only. Springer requires R5.1 requests, beginning January 2025.

Important: Any usage fetches requested outside these parameters will result in an error:

Code: 3031
Severity: Error
Message: Usage Not Ready for Requested Dates
Data: Oxford University Press has transitioned to R5.1. No R5 reports are available for periods from 2025-04 onwards.

For more details, see the COUNTER Registry entry for OUP:
https://registry.projectcounter.org/platform/1860d58d-dc85-4105-8477-910a56025cc1

Action for libraries

• Be aware that this error message—like any autoload error—will halt scheduled harvests in Springshare LibInsight or other SUSHI harvesters.
• To resolve, libraries will need to:
  • Delete failed loads.
  • Run a manual load for the correct date range.
  • Reset scheduled future harvests as relevant.

The BCLA Core dashboard for OUP stats (Grove Music) has been updated to reload missing April–June 2025 data from R5.1:
https://acaweb.libinsight.com/grove

There are not individual BCLA Core dashboards for Springer and Cambridge stats, but reload is complete for missing April-June 2025 data from R5 1 to update the combined Core dashboard: https://acaweb.libinsight.com/core

This post was updated Sept. 10, 2025, to add Springer Nature and Cambridge University Press.

📊 New Resource: Running Circulation Reports in WMS Analytics

We’ve added a new video and handout to help you transition from Sierra-style reports to the new Reports/Visualizations tools in WMS Analytics.

🎥 Video tutorial
Learn how to access and use the Monthly Circulation Statistics and Circulation Events Detail reports.

📄 Step-by-step guide
Create Sierra-style crosstab reports using Excel PivotTables – perfect for analyzing circulation by location and borrower category.

📌 These resources cover:

• How to filter your Circulation Statistics in WMS (e.g., view Check-Outs only)

• How to group Circulation Events Detail data using PivotTables

• How to get unique item counts (optional)

🔗 Watch the video
🔗 Download the step-by-step guide

New Resource: Step-by-step instructions for selecting a single title in OCLC Collection Manager are now available from BCLA. This guide walks through how to search for a title, review linking settings, and verify successful access.

OCLC Support has a helpful FAQ guide on how to add and configure shelving locations in both the Holding Codes Translation Table and the Loan Policy Map in Service Configuration:
How to Add or Remove a Shelving Location in WMS

At the Collection level, WorldCat holdings for open-access collections are disabled by default in Collection Manager. To add selected open-access titles to Discovery, use institution setting (default) to add holdings.

OCLC defines cataloging "etiquette" for WorldCat records in their Bibliographic Formats and Standards guide, specifically the Quality Assurance section.

WMS Record Manager users with Cataloging Full or Admin roles should follow the General Guidelines in Section 5.2.1.

Section 5.2.3 - Editing capabilities for PCC records outlines the fields non-PCC catalogers can edit on BIBCO (PCC) records (identified by MARC 042). While not enforced by Record Manager, these guidelines provide best practices for shared bibliographic data.

If you're unsure about an edit, submit a bib file maintenance request to OCLC Metadata Quality staff at bibchange@oclc.org.

WMS Circulation has a check-in mode called “Non loan return.” WMS identifies these transactions as “Items Soft Checked Out” in Reports or "item soft issued" in the Circ Item Inventories available via OCLC sFTP.

When BCLA libraries migrated from Sierra, “INTL USE” (item fixed field 93) migrated to WMS as “soft check in.”

Non loan returns in WMS allow you to check in items that were used but not checked out. Such returns can be applied to items from the reference collection, items that are on reserve, or items found in a reading room.

A soft check in indicates that the item was not checked out to a patron and did not leave the library. Soft Check in transactions use the Non Loan Return Check In mode in WMS Circulation:

Flow between WMS Circ and Reporting for Non Loan Returns.

WMS documentation for Inventory and Soft Check In.

You can click here to open the OCLC Community Center and upvote an enhancement to make the remote database option workable for OpenAthens.

You can click here to open the OCLC Community Center and upvote an enhancement to make the remote database preview tray customizable.

Please contact us at bclasupport@acaweb.org if you would like to request a link to your Sierra MARC (bib/item) archive or the Basecamp archive, including the OCLC translation table and migration reports for your library.