Virgo Project Update: Virgo Classic, Course Reserves

The Virgo 4 team has an important announcement, new things to try out, and our usual request this month.

First, the announcement: the Virgo Classic service will be fully retired on January 14, 2020.

We are already hard at work replacing components of Virgo that rely on Virgo Classic functions:

  • In November, links from Virgo to Virgo Classic pages will be less noticeable, and we will post banners on Virgo Classic pages noting the pending retirement.
  • User interviews and web analytics show no Virgo operations remain that rely on Classic other than Course Reserves,  but if we missed your favorite, let us know right away at
  • As of January 2020, Course Reserves will no longer rely on Virgo Classic.

Try these new things in the Virgo 4 Prototype:

  1. Limit results to “Online” or “On Shelf”
    Try any Basic or Advanced search, then set Availability to show just items “Online” (available electronically) or “On Shelf” (physical items available for checkout)
    Availability On Shelf
  2. Bookmark search results in folders for use later
    Select the bookmark icon for any item displayed, log in via Netbadge if prompted, and save the item to a folder you create. See your saved bookmarks whenever you sign in to Virgo.
  3. See cover images for most materials.
  4. Article searches appear by relevance, and can be filtered by source.
    Select Articles from the Basic Search source dropdown, then See More Results at the bottom of article results.

    Filter by the facet of Publication to limit searching to a specific journal with results.
  5. Login via Netbadge to check library account status (see above).

And our usual request: thanks to all the folks who have provided feedback so far. Please share this post widely, and keep giving us input at

Up Next:

The next few features will be:

  • Improved author and title browsing
  • More sources available to search
  • User interface refinements

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