Open WorldCat

If you do a search in Google under Jean Grove "Little Ice Age", one of the records reads Find in a Library: The Little Ice Age. This, it turns out, is a link to an open version of OCLC's WorldCat master library catalog for that book and, if you enter your zip code, will provide a list of libraries in that area that own a copy along with a link to their respective library catalogs.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 21, 2004):

Since last fall Google has been working on a pilot project with OCLC to make catalog entries from thousands of college and public libraries part of a typical Internet search.

The project, called Open WorldCat, now makes library-catalog records available as searchable documents that can be indexed by Google's search engine. Some two million records -- chosen because they represent the most-frequently held books in libraries -- have already been added to Google's index as part of the pilot project. If the project continues, OCLC hopes to eventually add all 54 million records from the organization's WorldCat catalog.

According to OCLC:

The goal of the Open WorldCat pilot is to point more people -- even those who don't typically visit libraries -- to library collections for the material they want. The pilot promotes the value and relevance of libraries on a scale far greater than any library or group could achieve alone.

For me, because I'm on-campus and because Syracuse University subscribes to the commercial version of WorldCat, I also see links to my library's interlibrary loan service so I could order a copy if the library didn't own it (it does).

Posted by Tom on June 01, 2004