Hi everyone. You may have noticed that our blogging velocity and perhaps vociferousness has waned in the past few months. But not our veracity, certainly....

WorldCat.org is growing by leaps and bounds in terms of people who use it to find relevant, timely information in libraries worldwide. Usage is up, referrals (other Web sites who link in to WorldCat.org) are up, lists, profiles, reviews, ratings, tags, searches saved--all of these metrics continue to increase month over month, year over year. WorldCat.org is also still growing in a huge way in terms of the content that is available. More than 1.5 billion items are now findable in libraries from a single search box. 111 million+ of those items are articles from the following sources:
* OAIster
* JSTOR Archive
* Elsevier metadata
* Medline
* ERIC
* British Library Inside Serials
* ArticleFIrst

And the WorldCat.org traffic partners like EasyBib, BibMe, RedLaser, Pic2Shop and many many others that have embedded WorldCat.org data into their apps and sites make it even easier for you as a user to find items in libraries, no matter where you start your search.

We've enjoyed giving all the latest updates over the past 3 years in this format--the WorldCat blog--but we've realized the conversation has largely moved to other locations like Facebook and Twitter. So we're still committed to bringing you all the news that's fit to know about WorldCat.org from a library user point of view...but as of August 21, we will do it in one fewer place. The content of the blog will stay here and stay searchable, but we will no longer post to it or accept comments on posts.

If you haven't liked WorldCat.org on Facebook or followed us on Twitter yet, go do it now so you won't experience any disruption in discussion. In fact, you'll probably be refreshed to see all the discussion going on there. If you're a librarian, make sure you add the OCLC Cooperative Blog into your RSS feedreader, because we'll post the behind-the-scenes of-interest-only-to-librarians stuff there now, too.

See you over on these other places. And thanks for continuing to be such loyal readers and users of WorldCat.org, and of libraries.

In the category of "just letting you know..."

On Sunday, July 10 there will be a scheduled service downtime for the cover art display on WorldCat.org from 1:00 am until at least 6:00 am and, at most, 11:00 am (U.S. Eastern Time). We apologize for any inconvenience this causes. We need to take the cover art feature off-line in order to upgrade the storage systems and capacity. During this time, covert art will be unavailable.

This event is part of ongoing upgrades that OCLC undertakes in order to improve services for you and the member libraries that power WorldCat.org.

In a rare case of "Wow, I can't believe I hadn't done that yet..."

I have been meaning to tell you about this fabulous blog post that a genealogy blogger, Heather Kuhn Roelker, posted back in January. I know, I know...see above disclaimer. Anyway--she shares a story about how she discovers WorldCat.org and how her search eventually leads her to the library who holds the materials related to her Great-Great-Great-Grandfather. She'd been searching for information on him for a very long time.

So even though there was some delay in actually locating the materials...due to some very awesome librarians, she eventually gets the letters and explains:

"I immediately found the contact information for the McCormick Library of Special Collections and sent a request, along with the citation from WorldCat. Within two weeks a copy of the archive arrived. Only a genealogist would understand the anticipation and excitement I felt when the packet was delivered."

It's a wonderful thing to know that WorldCat.org helped her connect to her family's roots. Plus, who can resist the heartwarming story of overcoming research obstacles to triumph in the end?
Note we do have a few resources specifically for genealogists for WorldCat.org. Check them out. But my main question is: have you searched WorldCat.org for your family history recently?