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I don't use Facebook a ton. Being a GenXer, I tend to live on email and Twitter. I do enjoy it when I have time, and have re-connected to a bunch of old high school friends and folks who have moved away over the years.

I have noticed, though, that there seem to be a lot of games, polls and memes making the rounds of FB. I haven't played any of the dedicated FB games (like Mafia Wars). I am a gamer, but I tend towards Xbox with my 10-year old. Similarly, I haven't taken advantage of any of the "Which Greek God Are You Most Like?" type polls. Unless I understand the criteria, I'm not interested. I mean, come on... if you're going to tell me I'm more like Circe than Mercury, I need to know why.

I have, however, taken part in a couple of "memes" that friends have passed along. These usually take the form of a questionnaire delivered in a note, which the initiator tags with your name. You are encouraged to answer the question and pass it on to 10, 15, etc. of your friends.

The most recent couple of these I've been invited to reply to involved listing of favorite "Top 10" or "Top 15" things. What I did when responding was to create my replies as WorldCat lists to make them easier to share. You can see my WC lists for "Top 15 movies" and "Top 15 books."

For the "movies" list, I also made sure to add the editions of the movies that had cool "cover" art (although I guess it's "box" art for VHSs or DVDs), and then pointed folks to the "Covers Only" view of that list via the WC List link, as part of my FB reply.

A couple friends commented that they thought it was a much more interesting and helpful way to do a list like this. It was certainly more fun for me. I can even see, from the WC List page for each list, how many other WorldCat users have viewed my lists.

Sharing lists of "favorites" is fun. And WorldCat can add a bit of library flavor to the mix.

Making lists on WorldCat.org is getting to be pretty popular. We currently have over 200,000 of them on the site, with more being added daily. I've done a few of them myself, including a recent one that is simply a copy of the items mentioned in a recent io9 blog post, "Where to start with young adult science fiction." WorldCat lists are great for things like that; keeping track of books that I'd eventually like to borrow from the library and read to/with my son at some point... in the frighteningly-ever-nearer future when he goes from "kid" (he's 10) to "young adult."

With a list like that, it's neat to be able to share it or send a simple link to a friend. WorldCat makes it easy for anybody to do that. Some lists, though, are quite a bit more... well... research intensive. And WorldCat is a great place to work on bibliographies of a much more substantive nature, especially if you want help from others.

A great example of such a list is one being created by the Senior Information Specialist here in OCLC's corporate library. Tam Dalrymple provides the writers and editors on my team with absolutely AWESOME research service for many of the pieces we work on, including some of the OCLC membership reports. But she also works on long-term projects related to the profession as a whole. Tam is currently assembling the list, "Library Users and Non-Users - A Bibliography from the OCLC Library." This is a collection of studies on how -- or whether -- libraries fit into people's information-seeking behavior. Right now Tam is concentrating on published books, reports or dissertations, rather than articles. Currently many of the items focus on library use and users, but one of her goals is to include more studies that start from the perspective of the information seeker.  There are 50 items on the list as of today... worth taking a look if you have any interest in research involving library use.

And... As you can guess from reading that description, this is a work in progress. Tam is actively soliciting idea for additions to the list. If you can think of something, feel free to email her at: dalrympt@oclc.org.

Two great ways to use WorldCat Lists: personal forget-me-nots, and shared, major research efforts. My guess is that there are a lot of other lists on WorldCat that fit somewhere in between.

PS: You can search for others' WorldCat lists by clicking on the "Search" drop-down box at the top of the WorldCat.org screen, and choosing "Search for Lists."

If you're interested to learn more about doing mash-ups and creating other apps with WorldCat data, be sure to checkout and then register for the upcoming WorldCat Mashathon in Seattle.

There are still plenty of spaces for app developers who would like to know how to incorporate noncommerical book and article data into their apps and mash-ups. You can build an app that helps people find good information about a certain subject, for example, and then connect them to the local library that has the material. (Through WorldCat, of course!)

The WorldCat Mashathon is a great place to test drive the WorldCat Search API and other WorldCat Web tools. Plus you'll see a preview of the new WorldCat Basic API that is coming soon and will be available to anyone and everyone. Here's a quick run-down of the event details:

WorldCat Mashathon Seattle
Sponsored by the OCLC Developer Network and the University Libraries of the University of Washington.
Thursday-Friday, Nov. 5-6, 2009
Odegaard Undergraduate Library, University of Washington campus
Register now

You bring your laptop and ideas, and we'll take care of everything else. (Breakfast, lunch, snacks and copious amounts of caffeine are included for the 2 days.)