Results tagged “WorldCat” from WorldCat Blog
We've just incorporated WorldCat Identities into WorldCat.org navigation proper, rather than having to satellite out to a listing and then find your own way back. You can get to a WorldCat Identities page from the "Find more information about" drop-down in the Details section of a detailed record:
WorldCat Identities is one of those fun things we like to play around with, here at OCLC. It showcases things you don't find many other places--like you can see the most widely held works by a writer, or how one fictional character is related to another one, or get a visual for publication timelines, or audience recommendation levels, or, or, or...there's a lot of good stuff there.
In fact, here's our own Andy Havens talking about WorldCat Identities:
So who's your favorite WorldCat Identity? Tell the world, in your comments. Or tweet it with the tag #wcid
Updated note:The Barack Obama Identities page linked to above does not list the subject headings with him as President. It turns out, WorldCat Identities reflects a writer or a character's bibliographic footprint. Everything on an Identities page is actually pulled from a bibliographic record in WorldCat. So WorldCat needs people to write more items (and have libraries acquire them) about Obama now that he is the POTUS, and the Identities page will update accordingly.
If you've already visited WorldCat.org this week, you might have already noticed the redesigned detailed display. The new design helps you locate and get an item more quickly, and puts social actions and evaluative content right up top--so you can tell fairly quickly if an item is the resource you want. My personal favorite thing is the new larger, persistent search box at the top.
In addition, the "More like this" box helps you find related content that is lower down in the page. In fact, we've now aggregated all the information about an item onto a single page instead of hiding it under several tabs, making it much easier to see everything about an item without making multiple clicks.
One note: there were a few minor issues that surfaced during this major redesign. We're working to resolve these few small things as fast as we can.
A very long time ago (2005! gasp!), I wished for all the library content in the world to fit in your pocket. We're a whole lot closer to that now, with the launch of the new WorldCat mobile pilot. The six month-long pilot will gather data to help inform future WorldCat mobile efforts, and is currently available to people in the US and Canada.
To download the application, go to www.worldcat.org/m on your mobile phone's Web browser.
The current WorldCat.org mobile pilot complements the recently released experimental iPhone app for WorldCat, built from the WorldCat Search API.
Once you've used WorldCat.org on your mobile phone, please give us your feedback with details of your experience and/or suggested enhancements.
This pilot was developed through a partnership with the mobile technology organization Boopsie. You, too, can partner with WorldCat by linking in.
Wondering if your phone will work? Here's a list of supported devices, which include iPhones, Blackberries, Nokias and more.
OCLC apologizes for poor response time on WorldCat.org during November 19 and 20. The OCLC servers that run WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local were attacked by processes initiated from nearly 2,000 IP addresses that proved to be registered to a single source. Our investigation revealed that these attacks seriously degraded response time for WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local users. OCLC blocked the attacks and response times returned to normal.
The WorldCat team is working on developing appropriate merchandise such as WorldCat t-shirts, mugs, etc.--so that you can show the world how much you love finding things online in libraries. It's a project in process, but you can start to see the results in Flickr. Bob and I had some fun at a recent library conference in California with Goofy Lost and Found. We're definitely still working out the kinks at this point, but we've started a WorldCat group pool--and we'd love to have you join us.
If YOU have a penchant for t-shirt design and have a cool idea you think might be worthy of WorldCat wear, let us know! We always love seeing clever creativity connected to our favorite online library catalog.
Hey hey, we are so proud. WorldCat.org made the New York Times and International Herald Tribune today!
- The Tip of the Week is exclusively about WorldCat and how to look up materials at your library on the Web.
- The Tribune story is part of a larger technology assistance article, but it makes a nice mention of the Firefox and Facebook widgets for WorldCat, too.
Hooray for libraries making the news. If we all share the story with someone we know, maybe we'll make the "top e-mailed stories" list!
A nifty new WorldCat app has just been released on Facebook called CiteMe. Type in a title, author, subject, or isbn and presto! A formatted citation comes up, right in the Facebook environment.
Of course, if you're looking to do a whole bibliography in a click, staying on the WorldCat.org site is the way to go. You can build a list of all your works and generate your Works Cited page, quickly and easily. But for one or two listings or a quick refresher when you're posting out--this new Facebook app can't be beat!
A recent feedback message questioned whether libraries have a place on the social Web. If ease of use, community, experience and knowledge are valued; then libraries and librarians are perfectly suited for this new online environment. Many, many other bloggers have posted on this topic, including all of the bloggers ranked by OEDb and several books and articles have been published on the topic lately. This is just my take from the WorldCat.org side of things.
Why Social Networking
Social networking and Web 2.0 in general have come to mean many different things. I can understand why the terms--and even some of the tools we associate with the terms--are misunderstood. We at WorldCat.org are not thinking so much about social networking, rather we are building a space where information seekers, library patrons and librarians can come together and collaborate.
We are thinking well beyond the me-tooism of chasing 'friends' on MySpace or 'fans' on Facebook, even as we exploit those environments to bring library resources closer to Web users. If WorldCat.org was just a list of 'friends' and the books they have read, it would be nothing more than all the other book related sites.
It's All About Easy
Librarians and professional researchers have had access to OCLC's WorldCat database for decades. But we made the public face of that database easy to use so everyone can benefit from the knowledge accumulated in libraries and from the experience of librarians.
Think libraries don't have a place among Web 2.0 rock-star sites? Think again. Ease of use is a hallmark of Web 2.0. Consider Google Maps, YouTube or Flickr.
The first generation of Web-based tools provided services similar to what these sites offer, but the tools of yesterday required patience, arcane knowledge and often browser plugins and high-speed Internet access. We were able to share photos in the 1990's and even earlier, but those tools were so complicated or expensive that most people never bothered. In fact most people didn't even know the opportunity to learn from and share with each other existed online. IMHO we all lost out.
We are making WorldCat.org as easy to use as possible and building tools to help Web users everywhere to discover the wealth of information libraries, experts and librarians can bring to bare on common questions. By brining library resources to the Web user, we will increase the reach and impact that a 'serious researcher' or librarian can have within their area of expertise.
So thank a librarian, a teacher, a student, a professor and a sergeant. Thank a stay-at-home mom, a pastor, a rabbi. Thank a business analyst, an entrepreneur and a delivery driver. Thank your neighbors for helping to create this great learning environment of Web 2.0. And I thank the collective You for so many years of sharing and teaching.
