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Category: Tools and Technology

Linking to WorldCat in Reference Emails.

Linking to WorldCat in Reference Emails.

Published by Iris on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008


So here’s the thing. Like many reference librarians, I use WorldCat all the time. And like many reference librarians, I use the FirstSearch version a lot for advanced features and more seamless integration with our local collections than WorldCat.org can offer. For instance, I love the “Advanced Options” under “More Like This” that lets me pick and choose which parts of the metadata were relevant to me and do a more advanced search on just those elements. And sure, the FirstSearch display is a little overwhelming, but part of what makes FirstSearch good for professionals is the huge amount of information displayed for each record. We’re used to the display, so it’s not a problem for us, and often I skim through all that information and learn a whole lot about an item in a very short amount of time. Besides, my eyes are trained to take in what I want from that interface and leave the rest. I know where on the page the OCLC number lives, for example, so I only look at it if I want to.

One thing it doesn’t do well, though, is let me link to a specific record. I can’t send a link to a student and say “Here, this is the journal I was telling you about.” I can do this at WorldCat.org, though, and that’s a much better interface for students and faculty anyway. I wish there were a “link to this record” in FirstSearch, or at least a “View this record at WorldCat.org,” but since there isn’t, here’s what I do.

  1. Do all my behind-the-scenes advanced searching in FirstSearch (when appropriate).
  2. Find what I’m looking for.
  3. Do a little happy dance in my chair.
  4. Copy the OCLC number.
  5. Open a new tab and click the bookmark I’ve names “WorldCat Link Base.” This contains the base of WorldCat.org’s permanent URL. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
  6. Paste the OCLC number onto the end of that URL and hit enter.
  7. Et Voila! Stable URL to the bibliographic record of whatever-it-is I wanted to send to somebody, complete with a friendly interface.

The trick comes when they’re off campus and don’t have pre-loaded links to our Interlibrary Loan system. I wonder if it’d be possible to go through our proxy server for that. If so, I’ll have to change my link base… Hmm…. things to ponder. And wouldn’t it be nice if I knew javascript and could make a bookmarklet that would do that to OCLC numbers for me, and maybe copy the full stable URL to my clipboard?

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These are a few of my favorite things

Published by Iris on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

I found myself listing my three favorite e-resources today. Usually I have trouble coming up with my favorite of anything, but these three popped into my head with little effort.

Ulrich’s
I hate trying to figure out where an obscure serial has been indexed, but Ulrich’s makes this easy (most of the time). But even beyond that, I absolutely love it for solving a major problem for my students. For the last two years, I’ve taught this as a cheat sheet of “print sources.” I had the hardest time coming up with an easy way to explain how to tell if what you’ve found online (on the free web or through our bibliographic databases) counts as a “print source” when print vs online is becoming a more and more murky distinction every year, and really makes no sense at all to students (or librarians, really). Students were paralyzed thinking they couldn’t use eJournals because their professors had banned “web sources,” and professors wondered why their students were using out-of-date and only-barely-relevant journal sources in their papers. It was because their poor students had been confining themselves to our print journal collection, which is only a fraction of our total journal collection. So now I get up in front of a class and show them the cheat sheet. If you can find a publication name (and I show them how to hunt one down), look it up in Ulrich’s. If it is listed, it counts as a “print source.” Problem solved.

OED
I love word histories, and this is the most comprehensive dictionary of word histories. Ever. I don’t often have much call to use it in my day-to-day work, but I love it for all those late-night “I wonder when we started using ‘research’ as an intransitive verb” moments I have. It has also solved many a word squabble in my family (which has at least 4 discussions about word usage, etymology, or relationship over the dinner table each week).

MLA International Bibliography
I love this because it’s such a treasure-trove of articles, and (please don’t laugh) because it’s incredibly quirky. I know that we’re supposed to love it when students can use resources on their own. You know… usability and stuff. But this thing is a bear to use well, and I’m pretty comfortable with it, which makes me feel useful. And I love feeling useful.

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Free Book Covers for Libraries!!!

Published by Iris on Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Way back in the day, we got all excited when people (Tim Spalding among them) started working on the idea of an open repository of book covers. Wouldn’t it be nice, we thought, if we didn’t have to pay for these things, or follow Amazon’s restrictions about where images had to link.

Well, today Tim and LibraryThing have made that dream come true, or at least begin to come true. He lays out all the details (how to do it, what you’ll get, and what you should know before getting started) in this blog post.

Libraries of the world, Rejoice!!!

[Update 8/12: They raised the limit on the number of covers you can pull in per day.]
[Update 8/13: The LibraryLaw Blog thinks about the copyright implications of LibraryThing’s project. Don’t worry, Mary doesn’t slam the project. She just wonders about it, and presents us with section 113(c) as the possible best exception to exclusive rights for LibraryThing’s purposes.]

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Ooohing and Aaahing at the Universe

Published by Iris on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

I love Google Earth. I enjoy zooming around and looking at places I’ve been or places I’ve heard of and especially places I’ve lived. But today I learned that there’s a similar program for the Universe. That’s right, nebulae and solar systems, and planet surfaces. Fun stuff!! It’s called World Wide Telescope, and it’s a free download. And so, because it was free and very very cool, I downloaded it and zoomed around the universe for a while, peeking under Neptune and into the Milky Way, prodding Venus, and spinning Mars around a crazy axis.

I sure hope some student needs something like this sometime and asks me about it at the reference desk. That way I can count what I did for the last 20 minutes as work.

p.s. Contrary to it’s About page, I don’t think this counts as a Web 2.0 tool, no matter how cool and shiny. For one thing, it’s not on the web once you download the application and start zooming. But that’s just me picking nits.

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