I’ve been a fan of WorldCat.org pretty much since OCLC unveiled it. I’ve had a WorldCat.org search box in the side bar since I first set up this blog, and on my other blog since November 2006. When I do book reviews on my personal blog, I typically provide links to WorldCat instead of Amazon. Way back when, I even added a review to the WorldCat record for one of my favorite books, Kamikaze Girls. And I routinely use it to look up any book I'm interested in reading, to figure out if any of the libraries in Omaha have it.
Of course, it had been so long since I actually logged into my WorldCat.org account that I couldn’t remember either my account name or my password. Oops. Well, once I got that straightened out, I got logged in and tried the new stuff from this lesson, Thing #26: Getting Social with WorldCat.org.
I’d never bothered creating a profile before. So I had a little fun getting one set up. (My username is akroeger, if you care to look me up.) I added the Criss Library and the Omaha Public Library as favorites. Then I added a review to another of my favorite books, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
I haven’t created any lists yet, but I definitely see the utility. I especially like that you can export your list to CSV, which should be compatible with RefWorks. We can export citations to RefWorks from our catalog, but it’s a bear to do. Perhaps WorldCat would offer an easier way for someone to compile the bibliography for their research paper. They could create one CSV file with not only the books from our catalog, but also any books they had to get through interlibrary loan. That’s a nice plus.
I kind of like being able to create links for search results. Check out my subject search for medieval bestiaries. If you’re interested in this topic, Ann Payne’s Medieval Beasts is a great book to start with. So sad there’s no cover image for it. Even sadder that my library seems to no longer have it. I know we used to, because I read it here before I bought it.
My library already uses WorldCat.org. We have a WorldCat search box on our home page, neatly integrated into our Find box. Right now, as I type this, our catalog is offline for a software upgrade. During this catalog outage, we are using WorldCat.org to search our holdings, obtain call numbers, etc.
Both professionally and personally, I rely on WorldCat.org a lot.
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