Library and Archives Canada catalogues: What’s new?

Library and Archives Canada has updated their library catalogues with two new offerings.

1. Voilà replaces AMICUS, and includes bibliographic descriptions and location information for published materials held at most libraries across Canada, including LAC’s collection. 
2. Voilà covers all subject areas and formats, including printed books, computer files, sound recordings, videos, maps, microforms, newspapers, and works in large print and Braille; and,
3.  Aurora is Library and Archives Canada’s online catalogue of published material held in its own local collection, and based upon the same WorldCata platform, and "look and feel" as Voilà.

When in doubt about which one to search, we recommend Voilà as it searches the combined catalogues of most Canadian libraries and includes LAC’s local collection. An A-Z entry on the library’s web page has been added.

In a nutshell: Aurora is a limited “view” of the much larger Voila, and Voila is a “Canadian view” of the giant WorldCat catalogue.

An author wants to see if their work(s) is in LAC’s national collection: How to?
Use  Aurora if you want to search the Library and Archives Canada’s national collection. For example, for a researcher who may want to check “if my book is in LAC’s collection.” Using Aurora could be the simplest solution.  

But you can also perform the same search in VOILA by limiting your search in VOILA using the location facet/filter (see below).

Are Carleton University Library’s holdings found in VOILA? 

1. Yes, and they should be up-to-date!  But there are a couple of caveats:
2. In some cases, we may have the print edition in our collection, but not the ebook (or vice versa), so Voilà will display our holdings for the the print but not the ebook. BUT this may not be obvious at first glance, without exploring the “Other editions and formats” section in the bibliographic record display. Depending upon several factors, you may have to scroll down several screens to see the Carleton University holdings entry for any given record.

Top tip: Aurora vs VOILA and the location filter/facet

Check out the default Library location facet on the left pane of any search results and you’ll note that you don’t have to go to AURORA to do an AURORA scoped search in VOILA, and vice versa. 

You can perform a VOILA-like search from AURORA or an AURORA-like search from VOILA by using the Library location filters.   

VOILA	AURORA