Review: Wolters Kluwer’s IntelliConnect® Enhancements

IntelliConnect® is the online search platform powered by Wolters Kluwer.  In early July, Wolters Kluwer released new enhancements to its IntelliConnect® research system in response to customer needs.  The added features are there to produce answers faster and more efficiently than before.  The interface has over 1 billion documents and to date, serves more than 160,000 people.  While at the AALL Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, I was given the opportunity to take a look at live demonstration of the new enhancements with Executive Director of Product Development John Defoe.

To start, users will see and be able to use the new features added to the homepage.  When users log into their IntelliConnect® interface, they will notice the “Browse tree” is now housed in a separate pane on the left hand side of the home screen.  In addition, it opens automatically giving users full and quick access to subscription content.  Users will also find that at the top of the browse tree there is a “Favorites” link that expands by default.  Arranged alphabetically, Favorites give researchers quick access to the content and services that they most often use.  As stated before, the link opens automatically but there is a preference section that allows user to have Favorites closed by default.

Other enhancements include a “Practice Areas” and “Titles A-Z.”  The Practice areas link is at the top of the browse tree.  To begin, the link is initially “all practice areas,” but is transformed to “selected practice areas” when you tailor your needs to specific areas.  To be even more helpful, the search scope is then changed to “selected content.”  Furthermore, the pop up window for selected areas now has a “select all” command at the top, which provides the added convenience of allowing users to select all needed content.

The new addition of “Titles A-Z” allows users to quickly and easily access all titles that are offered on the platform.  The titles are listed alphabetically.  Needless to say, you will only have access to the titles that are apart of you subscription.  Titles outside of you subscription will still be listed, but will not be hyperlinked for access.

There were a few other smaller enhancements that I want to briefly touch on now.  First, they have now included a “Relate” button to a selection of documents.  This feature allows the user to find other content that relates back to the original document pulled up.  For example, when researching a federal statute, the relate button will return committee reports, regulations, and the like.  The related content will appear in a separate tab for quickly referencing the original search, while simultaneously running the related content.

This separate tab feature leads me to the next enhancement of increased search sessions.  Users are now able to conduct up to eight search sessions at one time.  Originally only five sessions could be run.  Now, users have more searching capabilities and each session is running in its own tab.  Users can close out each tab individually or all at once with a single click.

The last smaller enhancement I want to discuss is the improvement to its print function.  Users can now select, highlight, and print selected text from documents.  As an added bonus, the title of the document will also appear on the printed page along with the text selection.

All in all, the enhancements to IntelliConnect® are time-saving and provide users with more efficient searching.  The improvements have also created a much better homepage experience.  More content can be found on the home page which provides more functionality.  Additionally, for those who may need a refresher from time to time, tutorials and training links can be found on the homepage.

Tiffany R. Paige, Esq., Acquisitions Librarian, Mississippi College School of Law