WorldCat
From LIS 460 Summer 2007
Contents |
About WorldCat
According to the website, WorldCat is "the world's largest network of library content and services. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information." It is an international meta-catalog that offers some of the features of searching your local catalog while also providing links to catalog records of all other libraries that own the resource. Resource types include articles, books, music, video recordings, audiobooks, and digital resources. According to the website, over 85 million bibliographic records with over 1 billion holdings exist in the database, and there are more than 57,000 participating libraries around the world.
Users can search by author, title, keyword, ISBN/ISSN/OCLC Number, publication date, language, or format. Once you choose the resource you are interested in and the specific edition, then you can enter your location and WorldCat provides you with a list of libraries that own the resource in order of geographic proximity to your location. WorldCat displays participating libraries either at the level of consortium, institution, or individual library. That link brings you to the library or consortium catalog record for the item, which often includes the list of libraries or branches that own the item and its availability at each library.
An underutilized aspect of the WorldCat service is that registered users can review books and add details or notes about the books to the WorldCat database. Once a review has been posted it can only be edited by its original author, although anyone can change information on the Details page. Reviews and Details are not often complete, so although there is great sharing potential it could be that most users are relying on other services for these functions (Amazon.com, etc). You can also create lists and share them, but this feature is not heavily used either.
How to access the WorldCat database
The simplest way to access WorldCat is by visiting http://worldcat.org/, but there are other ways to use it as well. For libraries that subscribe to the OCLC FirstSearch reference search tool, FirstSearch searches the WorldCat database. By adding the term "find in a library" or site:worldcatlibraries.org to your basic Yahoo! or Google search, the top hit will be a link to the WorldCat results of that search. If you are using GoogleBooks you can click on the "Find this book in a library" link or in GoogleScholar click on the "Library Search" link to go directly to library holdings for that resource through WorldCat. You can download a WorldCat toolbar for Yahoo! or Google, or a Firefox browser search extension. You can also download a WorldCat search box to add to your school library website.
WorldCat's unique contribution to the library community
A local library catalog may have more advanced search and browse features for finding a resource, but WorldCat is especially useful if you need a specific book quickly, which may be the case with student research projects or teacher curriculum development. If you do not have time to order the book through your consortium or ILL, WorldCat is a great way to find out which libraries own that item and whether or not it is available. In addition to a link to the library's catalog record, the results of a search include a link for Library Information that brings you to the library's website with contact information and hours. This may also help you determine whether or not you have borrowing privileges or library access to the resource.
Since the WorldCat database relies on member libraries' records, there is also valuable edition information. Once you locate a title, there is a tab where you can browse and select various editions of the resource.
Using WorldCat in a school library
Although in most cases the school library catalog is sufficient for student and teacher needs, WorldCat provides an important service. Public school libraries are not WorldCat members because their resources are not available to the public. However if a member of the school community needs access to a resource that is not available at the school library, WorldCat is a good first step to locating the resource elsewhere. Some features that might be useful for school librarians, teachers, or students include: exporting the citation to EndNote or RefWorks, providing the citation in 5 standard formats (APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, and Turabian), linking to the Amazon.com record for the book in case you wish to purchase a copy, and the ability to create lists and share them.
In addition to accessing the WorldCat database directly, students and teachers might come across WorldCat results by accident. As I mentioned above, FirstSearch automatically searches the WorldCat database, and GoogleScholar and GoogleBooks both provide links ("Library search" and "Find this book in a library", respectively) that automatically search WorldCat without a user even knowing that's what they are doing until they see results on the WorldCat page. Therefore students and teachers may be unwittingly searching WorldCat and taking advantage the power of this database. On the other hand, searching a book title in the basic Google search engine does NOT bring up the WorldCat hit on the first page of results unless you actually include the term "worldcat" in the search.
Related links and sources
WorldCat home page: http://worldcat.org
OCLC home page: http://www.oclc.org/
OCLC's WorldCat page: http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/default.htm
FirstSearch: http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/default.htm
