WorldCat Blog

Find free textbooks through new WorldCat-powered CampusBooks iPhone and Android apps

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:22:09 -0500

Where are all these free textbooks coming from? WorldCat libraries, of course! And just in time for back-to-school.
Although let me digress for a minute to remind you that the textbooks are NOT free for the library.
BUT, with the help of this handy new app from CampusBooks.com--available for iPhone and Android--students of all ages can compare costs and availability of textbooks and source them from a number of different places: online web sites, the traditional college bookstore or now a library nearby.

The CampusBooks apps are free and provide prices on on new, used, ebook and rental textbooks. Similar to other mobile shopping apps that use the WorldCat Search API and WorldCat Registry APIs (in fact CampusBooks uses the pic2shop technology, who has also implemented WorldCat results), you simply scan the book barcode or type in a title, author, keyword or ISBN search and voila, local library phone numbers, URLs, address and maps at your fingertips.

If you're an iPhone or Android user, download the apps now at no cost through Apple's iTunes app store or the Android market on your phone. Photos below:

NEW! Top Libraries and Tags, Recent Reviews and Lists

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:30:27 -0500

We've added some new features to the home page which are worth a look. These features surface content WorldCat.org users are creating:

Most Popular Libraries: Lists the top 10 libraries as favorited by our users. Updated daily.
Most Popular Tags: A cloud of the top tags most frequently contributed to items in WorldCat. Updated hourly.
Recent Reviews: 3 items randomly selected from the last 25 which have received 1 or more reviews. Up to 3 reviews are shown per item. Updated hourly.
Recently Updated Lists: 9 lists randomly selected from the last 50 which have been updated or created. Updated hourly.

Come back and check them out often or, better yet, create some lists and reviews and get featured, if only for an hour.

School Reviews for Library Materials

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:03:52 -0500

AnchorageSchools, on WorldCat.org, has provided more than 7,500 reviews of items from their library which benefits their school's community and WorldCat.org users worldwide. Taking a few minutes to look through their recent reviews you'll find a "highly recommended" books like Pika: Life in the Rocks.

If you're posting reviews for use in your school or library, let us know.

New Items at WorldCat Libraries in July

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:32:00 -0500

In July 2010, 15,208 WorldCat libraries added new items (via Worldcat holdings).

The top five items that WorldCat Libraries added in July are:
1) Night, a biography by Elie Wiesel, was added by 2517 WorldCat libraries.

2) The Butter Man by Elizabeth Alalou and Ali Alalou, was added by 999 WorldCat libraries - A Junior Library Guild selection; Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, 2009.

3) Trading Places, an elementary and junior high fiction by Claudia Mills, was added by 959 WorldCat libraries.

4) Suite Francaise a novel by Irene Nemirorvsky, was added by 859 WorldCat libraries

5) The 100-Year Old Secret, an elementary and junior high fiction by Tracy Barrett, was added by 840 WorldCat libraries.

Google Gadget is back

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:19:00 -0500

The Google gadget for WorldCat is back! If you have a Google account, add the updated Google gadget for WorldCat to your iGoogle page.

"Find a Book" with Lexile measures and WorldCat.org

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:55:00 -0500

Help users find books at their reading level.

WorldCat has teamed up with MetaMetrics to offer "Find a Book" to help connect readers with books appropriate for their reading level, using the popular Lexile Framework® for Reading. Readers can either enter their Lexile measure or their grade and if they find reading materials difficult or easy. Once they find the books they're interested in, they connect to your library through WorldCat.org and check availability.

"Find a Book" offers the option to "Find in a library" which connects to WorldCat.org.

Once users are at WorldCat.org, they can create a list, add ratings, get automatic citations for an item or do other social networking-type activities connected to your summer reading program.

Try out the Find a Book site today!

Search WorldCat.org Using #Ask4Stuff on Twitter

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:20:05 -0500

If you're a Twitter user, take a moment to play with a new tool we've developed called Ask4Stuff. Our VP of Innovation, Mike Teets, blogged about this a few days ago. Mike describe this trial service as one of the experiments coming out of the OCLC Innovation Lab.

This trial service allows you to search WorldCat.org by sending a tweet. Just use the hashtag #ask4stuff followed by a few words as your search query and you will receive a tweet back with a PURL or a short URL to the results on WorldCat.org.

Here's an example tweet:
#Ask4Stuff lake erie shipwreck

And the reply:
@[username]We found something on lake erie shipwreck in #Ask4Stuff, get them at http://is.gd/daPWw

To tweet a search query, you just need to post a tweet using #ask4stuff followed by the words you would otherwise enter into the search box: #ask4stuff "search query".

You can limit your search to just titles if you use #ask4stuff ti:search query, such as:
#ask4stuff ti:where the wild things are

Or limit your search to just authors using #ask4stuff au:name query:
#ask4stuff au:daniel pink

For those readers who are patrons of a WorldCat Local library, you can search your local catalog using a hashtag and the URL prefix for your Local at WorldCat.org. For instance, the University of Washington's WorldCat Local URL is: http://uwashington.worldcat.org. To search their catalog, you would use the following tweet format:
#ask4stuff #uwashington [search query]

Your reply would include a short URL that would direct you to the results page at http://uwashington.worldcat.org.

Take a look at this experiment on Twitter and post any comments you have about this service. Even if you're not a Twitter user, you can view the tweets and replies by searching Twitter using the #ask4stuff hashtag.

Is this experiment useful? Practical? Fun? Let us know!

"Identities" of top spies revealed!

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:45:47 -0500

The Christian Science Monitor is running a slide show on the "Top 10 Notorious Spies," related to the recent news about the discovery of accused Russian spies.

The article was brought to my attention by Eric Childress from OCLC Research, who also kindly did the leg-work for putting together a list of the WorldCat Identities for all but one of the spies on the list. Apparently Harold James Nicholson is so sneaky that he managed to escape the watchful eyes of the world's librarians.

So... if the talk of modern spies has your users asking questions about famous skulduggery, you may want to have them check out the following:

Valerie Plame Wilson
Aldrich Ames
Robert Hanssen
Ethel & Julius Rosenberg
The Cambridge Five: Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross
Josephine Baker
Richard Sorge
Mata Hari

Thanks for the tip, Eric.

Look for new colorful WorldCat banners at your library

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:11:00 -0500

You may have already seen a few new posters or bookmarks at your library. Simple and color-saturated, if you're really dedicated you can download a desktop background and show your library support all on your own!

If you live in town and want to do some "guerilla marketing" on behalf of your library, you can print off the posters or ads, for example, and hang them in bus shelter stops, at coffee shops and other community gathering places. It's all free, fun and brings a breath of fresh air to promoting WorldCat in person.

WorldCat Identities for "not people"

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:39:00 -0500

WorldCat Identities is one of my favorite features of WorldCat, and I've talked about it here before. One of the things I haven't mentioned is that there are lots of Identities in the service for what I think of as "not people." In some cases, that can be a fictional character, like the Identity for Dracula. But the jump to an "identity" for fictional characters isn't that big... they still have proper, personal names, and I think that's how I tend to think about Identity.

So what kind of Identities are there in addition to people (or vampires) with personal names? Lots. Here's some to get you started (some from current events... some just because they seemed like interesting examples):

That gives you some idea of the range. And I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff I'm not even thinking of.

At the bottom of the Identities page, there's a tag-cloud of "Associated Subjects." I've included the one for Afghanistan below:

So after you find a neat Identity for a subject, you can take your quest further in WorldCat.org with related subject searches. So if you're looking for a different way to approach a subject, see if it's got an Identity. Some cool stuff in there.

WorldCat lists for Dads and Grads

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:58:00 -0500

Remind your favorite Dad and high school and college graduates that WorldCat lists are a great way to remember what you've already read, keep track of what you want to read next, or even hint at what you'd like to receive as a gift! Plus, looking at lists is a great way to identify new possibilities for worthy materials. A few cool lists we've noticed recently:

• Memoirs by lisaoberg (selection of memoirs to complement Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama)
• Dorm Days: Boarding School and College Life by nashvillepubliclibrary
• Reading List 01 - High School by minglam
• College teaching by larson78207

New Items at WorldCat Libraries in May 2010

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:13:00 -0500

The top five items that WorldCat Libraries added in May 2010 are:
1. The Red Pyramid has a reading level of elementary and junior high school. The Red Pyramid was added by 1001 WorldCat libraries.
2. Making Toast: A Family Story, a biography, was added by 955 WorldCat libraries.
3. Castle Waiting, has been added by 869 WorldCat libraries.
4. Crash, the DVD, has been added by 825 WorldCat libraries.
5. Storm Prey, by John Sandford, has been added by 824 WorldCat libraries.
The full list of recent items added by your library last month (May, 2010) appears on the WorldCat Library's profile page. You can find your own local library's profile by searching WorldCat Libraries, if they are a WorldCat library, you can see their recent items. 705 libraries have a new WorldCat recent items list - for a total of 10,942 recent items list for the month of May.
When you visit your library's recent items list, you can subscribe to the list with RSS and get updates each month in your RSS reader.

Add WorldCat to your summer reading

Mon, 24 May 2010 11:31:17 -0500

What are your reading plans for the summer? Before you head out for vacation or on holiday, remember that your library and WorldCat can help. You can do things like:

• Make a list of the books you'd like to read this summer (Here are Nancy Pearl's picks from last summer!)
• Write reviews of and rate the titles you've recently read
• Read other people's reviews of the books you're interested in
• Share your recent reads on WorldCat's Facebook Page

If you have high school age kids, remember that WorldCat gives them an easy way to track their summer reading lists and make notes about what they've read. They'll wow their teacher in the fall! Many school and public libraries put out summer reading lists on WorldCat. Here's an example of such a list...find your school's list on WorldCat.org...and then share it with all of us!

Celebrate Bike to Work week

Tue, 18 May 2010 09:59:25 -0500

I found out yesterday that OCLC, the library cooperative that stewards WorldCat, has made two bikes available for staff who would like to bike to work. This is to help celebrate national Bike to Work week in the U.S. The cool part is, you check out the bikes through the library! Any other libraries out there offering bikes for check out?

But seriously, there are some committed bikers who've made some good lists on WorldCat. And of course in many parts of the world --notably Holland--bikes are the primary form of transportation. Benefit from the collected wisdom:

Biking by Smooref

Biking by adserv

Things to Check out on Bicycle restoration by crochet42000

My pet peeves are bikers who
A. Ride on the sidewalk (kids excepted, but for adults this is ridiculous)
B. Ride against traffic (for both kids and adults, this is DANGEROUS)
C. Don't signal (even more important on a bike than in a car!)

So there you have it--my soapbox for safe biking. Enjoy the week and celebrate by donning that helmet and getting out there!

Welcome Book Bazaar iPhone app

Wed, 12 May 2010 14:59:56 -0500

WorldCat staffers love their mobile phones, no doubt. And now there's one more reason to love them even more--another new iPhone app is now available that includes library data via WorldCat and the WorldCat Search and Registry APIs. Called Book Bazaar, the free app was developed by Bayview Labs in Mountain View, CA,

With Book Bazaar, you type in a title, author, keyword or ISBN to compare prices for books at online or local bookstores, and now libraries. Developer Rizwan Virk was quoted in the official announcement as saying, "Book Bazaar is made for book lovers who want to find a specific book right away. The best and easiest way to find a book is at a local library, and so we want to support local libraries as much as possible."

We like this idea! Book Bazaar is available for U.S. iPhone users at the moment, but I understand more platforms are in development. I don't know offhand--but maybe someone can test and tell me--if you have an iPod Touch or an iPad, can you also download and use Book Bazaar? Let everyone know in the comments section.

See additional photos of the different screen shots on the WorldCat Facebook page. You can download Book Bazaar in the iTunes App store.