WorldCat Blog

WorldCat blog updates take new form

2011-07-13T16:03:43Z

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.

Planned downtime for cover art

2011-06-17T16:17:27Z

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.

WorldCat.org and libraries help connect genealogy blogger with ancestors

2011-06-01T22:53:00Z

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?

Top 20 Most Popular Items for May

2011-06-01T19:11:26Z

And lo, we have survived the apocalypse to bring you the Top 20 List for May. New to the list are: the worst school holiday ever (Lord of the Flies), everyone's favorite double suicide love story (Romeo and Juliet), and the novelization of what is arguably Van Halen's finest album (1984).

1. The World Book Encyclopedia

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

4. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

5. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

6. Python Essential Reference by David M. Beazley

7. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

9. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association

10. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

11. Night by Elie Wiesel

12. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

13. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

14. Food, Inc. directed by Robert Kenner

15. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

16. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

17. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

18. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

19. 1984 by George Orwell

20. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

New suggested search feature

2011-05-19T06:20:20Z

We all have wondered at one time or another if our search terms were good ones. Now a new suggested search option on WorldCat.org prompts you with possible search terms, with the most-used terms and phrases suggested at the top. You see this example, when I'm starting to type something about "financial." Each letter you type, the suggestions respond to the additional letters you type.

The new suggested search complements the "Did you mean?" prompt, that happens when you might have used a search term that looks like it might be misspelled.

Bem-vindos Português!

2011-05-16T15:00:15Z

Hey hey! We're now pleased to announce that WorldCat.org has been translated into Portuguese. Now, wherever you are, you can self-select your language preference as Portuguese or one of the other six languages: Simplified Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese.

Today, WorldCat represents more than 225 million bibliographic records, more than 2 million of which reflect Portuguese-language records. Libraries, museums and archives in Brazil and Portugal have contributed nearly 700,000 Portuguese-language records since June 30, 2010.

More WorldCat facts and statistics. And welcome, Portuguese scholars and readers.

Top 20 Most Popular Items for April

2011-05-06T18:33:22Z

Witness the return of the Top 20 List for April. Among the unsurprising "required reading list" items, an interest in the dark side of the American food industry and culture is showcased with Food, Inc. and Fast Food Nation. Another notable item is a hard to find collection of short stories entitled El Arrepentido y Otras Narraciones by Spanish author Ana María Matute, who became just the 3rd woman to win the Cervantes Prize for literature on April 27th.

1. The World Book Encyclopedia

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

4. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

5. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association

6. Python Essential Reference by David M. Beazley

7. Food, Inc. directed by Robert Kenner

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

9. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

10. El Arrepentido y Otras Narraciones by Ana María Matute

11. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

13. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

14. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

15. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

16. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

17. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

18. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

19. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

20. Night by Elie Wiesel

Expert Search indexes now available

2011-04-12T18:43:40Z

Do you ever need something more advanced than "Advanced Search"? Here are a few of the two-letter codes (called index labels) that also work in the WorldCat.org search box:
kw: keyword
au: author
bc: BC year
de: descriptor
dd: Dewey Decimal Classification number
ge: genre, like a novel
isbn: the ten-digit number for a book
issn: the eight-digit number for a magazine or journal
mt: material type, like a DVD
pb: publisher, like Ballantine
ti: title
yr: year of publication

Get the whole list from the OCLC Web site.

Look deep into my eyes... deeper... DEEPER....

2011-02-20T17:43:20Z

(Alice note: Andy really wrote this--but he's away from his desk temporarily and asked me to post it.)

OK... so you don't really have to look deeply into my eyes. But if you want to help improve an information-rich website, sometimes you've got to stare into a weird piece of machinery for awhile.

We go to a number of lengths to make WorldCat.org better, easier, faster and more robust. As part of these efforts, Lead User Experience Researcher Mike Prasse, PhD, recently conducted an eye-tracking study in order to better understand how the format of search services affect how users process the results. Basically, they hook up some helpful volunteers and watch where their eyes go on the screen as they try to do various searching tasks.

Mike's results indicate that the description that accompanies the title of an entry was very important to users when looking for a book, but less so when searching for articles. In a report on his findings, he discusses how subtle differences in page layout can have a major impact on what users first look at on a results page, and for how long.

He also explores the idea of "attentional slicing," where users look for key features of an object, rather than the object itself as a possible explanation of his findings. Other results include information about facets, summaries and other elements of the two services he compared, WorldCat.org and GoogleBooks.

Interesting stuff, and a good "peek" behind the curtain of what it takes to help make WorldCat.org better.

WorldCat.org testing to happen this Sunday

2011-02-16T22:27:52Z

On Sunday February 20 from 2:00 am until 4:00 am (U.S. Eastern Time), systems and storage testing will be run on WorldCat.org and a number of other related WorldCat services you might use from your library's Web site. There is a slight chance that WorldCat.org and these other services will be unavailable during some or all of this testing period. We're running the test to make sure that WorldCat.org functionality will not be affected by another planned downtime on February 27--more about that in a minute.

On Sunday, February 27 there will be a scheduled service downtime for WorldCat.org cover art from 1:00 am until at least 6:00 am and, at most, 11:00 am (U.S. Eastern Time). We need to take the cover art off-line in order to upgrade the storage systems and capacity.

Both of these events are part of ongoing upgrades that the WorldCat team undertakes in order to improve services for you. Apologies for the disruption...We are working to minimize outages in the future, and upgrades such as this one will help us provide better, more robust service going forward.

If you have any questions about this event, please ask.

More citation partners added to WorldCat.org roster

2011-02-14T16:30:49Z

On the heels of the recent EasyBib news, there comes more citation and reference management announcements: BibMe and Citavi now also include and link to WorldCat data!

BibMe has more than 1 million registered users already--and more than 25.5 million citations. BibMe uses WorldCat to fill in citation information for books--very similar to the way EasyBib uses it on their free site.

Citavi is a reference management and knowledge organization service used primarily in the German-speaking world--although there is an English version of the Web site. It helps you find, structure and document the resources you find very quickly within a single interface. WorldCat is now another online catalog that Citavi users can search in, pull citations for and make annotations to help their research and writing up process.

If you use a citation site other than BibMe, Citavi or EasyBib and you'd like it to include WorldCat data, please let us know via comments. (You can export to RefWorks, EndNote and EasyBib already from WorldCat.org.)

All in all, a good day for citations and WorldCat. Well, more importantly a good day for anyone who needs to do citations and wants help in a quick and easy way, powered by the world's libraries and librarians.

Citations poised to get (even) easier, thanks to new twist on EasyBib partnership

2011-01-27T22:11:18Z

For you library newshounds (!), you might have already seen the recent news release from OCLC, the organization who provides stewardship for WorldCat on behalf of the member libraries who contribute to it.

But for the rest of us, I'll risk repeating the good news: the creators of EasyBIb.com have come together with OCLC staffers--our own Jasmine among them--on a collaboration to help libraries deliver an even more robust citation service for their users: EasyBib Library Edition. (Catchy name, I know!)

EasyBib Library Edition will feature all the great things from the EasyBib.com free site, a very popular online citation site on the Web. But then it adds in even more: links to your library's site, catalog, ask-a-librarian/chat service and a unique skin specific for your library. It's all in an effort to make sure libraries and librarians are there to meet your needs, whenever and wherever you are. You'll be able to see more, do more and gain access to even more research materials from the simple EasyBib interface you may already use every day.

But WorldCat.org already has citations. Why improve on an already good thing?
This announcement doesn't change WorldCat's citation features. (Although the EasyBib team may have some good ideas later on, for how to make it better!) For now, WorldCat.org will continue to have citations the same way as it always has. This news just reflects a deepening of an already solid partnership of WorldCat with EasyBib.

And speaking of the current partnership, you might have seen the link to EasyBib when you used the WorldCat cite/export link. Or you might already be using EasyBib.com for your citations and you might have noticed that WorldCat powers the book citation selections.

So whether you use EasyBib already or are now inspired to check it out and see how WorldCat citations connect in with it, we're excited about the partnership and to see what the Library Edition will bring. Stay tuned as we build the service together and test it with a few beta libraries.

WorldCat one of the most popular book apps

2011-01-19T19:23:21Z

Guess who is one of the most popular book apps, as ranked by Alexa traffic data? Did you guess GoodReads? You'd be right. Shelfari? Right again. WorldCat? Yes!

Of course, this nifty site from AppAppeal uses Alexa data--which may or may not be totally accurate. But since most of the Web world agrees that it's better than nothing, we'll go with it.

So one of WorldCat's traffic partners, GoodReads, actually captured the top slot for North America and many other parts of the world...but WorldCat was ranked highest in China, Algeria, Peru, Austria, Poland, Greece and Taiwan.

In terms of page views, though, WorldCat.org had almost half for North America, second only to Shelfari. Here's a clip from their report:

"WorldCat.org reaches 35.6% of the users with 46.6% of all page views.... A ranking is calculated based on a combination of visitors and pageviews."

We're also the 2800th most popular Web site in the Philippines, according to the site. Despite only having 10,140 materials in WorldCat classified as Tagalog!

Visualizations like these are fun to play around with...and good to know where people are finding WorldCat most useful to find their local libraries and materials in libraries worldwide.

New iPhone app, Labelo.us, links to WorldCat

2010-12-17T15:30:35Z

Hold the phone! (The iPhone, that is.) Now there's another mobile barcode-scanning app called Labelo.us (pronounced like 'Label Us') that now links to WorldCat.org.

Labelo.us was developed by Nearest Island to help you find "product transparency on a single, open platform. Learn and share information about products and companies."

The barcode-scanning system works on all kinds of things--soup, electronics, socks, books and more. But what we care about here are things found in libraries. And books are among the many things found in libraries...

So on Labelo.us you can find books in libraries, see reviews and other data about books and other products. It uses 'channels' to bring it other people's perspectives on items, and includes a reputation system to help filter the results.

Here's the quotation from the Co-Founder and CEO David Rea from the official announcement:

"We are pleased to connect the smart, environmentally and socially-conscious shoppers who use Labelo.us to learn about the products they buy to one of the original green living ideas, the library, Having library data from more than 10,000 libraries consolidated into one site made it easy to connect our users to their local library to find the books and materials they're interested in."

Using Labelo.us, you can scan barcodes or search for books and then connect to WorldCat.org to find the libraries who hold those items.

Labelo.us is one of several mobile applications designed for users to access library information from WorldCat. See screen shots on the WorldCat Facebook page.

Top 20 Most Popular Items for November

2010-12-02T19:17:56Z

And here we find the Top 20 List for November ranked by number of views. Items new to the list are emphasized in italics. Notable this month are the return of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to the number 1 spot as the film version hits theaters, and George W. Bush's presidential memoir Decision Points rising on its release to number 4:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

2. Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone

3. Gustav Shpet's Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural Theory by Galin Tikhanov

4. Decision Points by George W. Bush

5. The Detective Novels of Agatha Christie by James Zemboy

6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

7. Willow by Julia Hoban

8. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

9. The Polluters by Benjamin Ross and Steven Amter

10. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

11. London Calling by Edward Bloor

12. Suspect by Michael Robotham