I was searching online today about a book I remembered from University, James Agee and Walker Evans’ “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” when I stumbled upon a link in a wikipedia article that took me to a follow up book that traced the families that Agee and Evans wrote about. When I clicked the link, it took me to [WorldCat.org] Search for books, music, videos, articles and more in libraries near you. Poof, not only did WorldCat tell me about the book, but it showed me all the libraries and book stores NEAR ME that had the book. I was reawakened to the ease of accessing my library (a 1 mile walk). Fantastic service!
4 thoughts on “Remember Your Library: WorldCat.org”
Comments are closed.
Nancy!
You should know about the Book Burro plugin, which incorporates Worldcat data into a popup menu on an Amazon page, so that you can see at a glance while you are looking at whether you should buy a book if it’s in a nearby library.
see
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron/book_burro/index.html
for my collected output about it (and related find-this-book-in-a-library tools) on Superpatron.
Oh, that sounds fantastic. I’ll check it out, Ed! Thanks.
Libraries are changing, expanding the range of services they offer, and keeping up with the digital age. Those who have dismissed them as old news are missing out on a big transformation and a huge service to those who don’t necessarily yet have access to the Internet at home. My local libraries are always buzzing with patrons and the waiting list for new books is incredible… and it’s not just books. I just discovered a small collection of French movies on DVDs that is much more interesting than the foreign film section at my local video rental store…. and cheaper! I’ve also become a heavy user of their books-on-CD collection during my daily commute. Long live public libraries! Barbara
I agree, Barbara. And with the tool that Ed pointed out, it is easy to see what is available locally.
Now if there were only more hours in the day to read books!