• 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!

I love to hear stories of how WorldCat helped connect a Web searcher with an item s/he is looking for, in a library. If anyone else has great stories like this, do share!

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!

Of coarse course that doesn't help us know whether we'll like the book once we find it. Usually we turn to someone else to help us figure that out. Someone like the publisher who puts nice summaries on the jacket flaps or a reviewer in a newspaper. But this is 2008 and I'm writing to a Web audience that is probably using an RSS feed to get this post. Which means you're probably a savvy bunch so all this talk of jacket flaps and newspapers is silly.

The fact is that readers on the World Wide Web often turn to Amazon.com to determine whether to buy this book or that book.

But what if you're headed to your local library? How do you find something to read? You can look at the staff picks once you get there. Or before you go you can search the more than 150 lists of books to read on WorldCat.org. Because, hey! If this person wants to read this book, then maybe you will too. But how do you, the Web-savvy reader, know for sure?

You look at the reviews of other WorldCat.org users!

And now you can read the Amazon review of this book and that book and many other books! And after you read the book you can rate it and review it here for other library users.

To read the Amazon reviews of a book on WorldCat.org, just find the book, scroll down a bit and click the Reviews tab. Then click back to the Libraries tab to see which library near you has the book. Find your library, click, log in and you're off!

And what about that scary movie you borrowed on Friday night? You can rate it and review it too. And soon you'll be able to see the Amazon reviews for it and other movies as well as music and games.

What more could you want!? No. Really. Tell us: What more do you want?

It's fun. And we find unexpected things this way. In many cases, though, the freedom we feel due to the unspecific nature of our quest is somewhat illusionary. Whomever is creating the space in which you browse has had a lot to do with what you find and how. "Staff Recommends" shelves, end-caps, bargain tables, posters, positioning... all these things combine to guide your browsing experience. Of course you still are in control; that's not the point. But neither are you randomly choosing from among an infinite number of materials in a random, uniform vacuum.

I'll give you an example. For a couple months, a couple years ago, I ended up buying a number of books that all had only one major thing in common: they all had bright, almost neon green covers. This was a fashion in cover design at the time, and after reading one that was good, I somehow was attracted to that color. And while the books in question weren't related... neither were they entirely dissimilar. Only certain kinds of authors and stories will be comfortable with a cover the color of radioactive lime.

Online, browsing is both more unfettered -- you can follow links from page to page and site to site very easily -- and less free. You can't jump as easily, let's say, from a page about sketching to one that has blank sketchbooks, unless the link is built in. In a live store environment, there is a greater chance for serendipity, because the "links" only have to be provided by physical proximity.

So... how to build interesting, serendipitous browsing experiences online? One way is to create a set of materials that don't, on the surface, have anything in common... like my electric green books (though, I guess, they only had something on the surface in common).

For example, the American Book Review recently created an awesome list of the "100 Best First Lines from Novels." They're all novels, yes... and many of them would probably make a list of "best novels" in general. But it's very interesting to move from book-to-book based on a criteria like "best first lines." You don't browse the same way as you do when you go by subject, author, time period, etc.

It's a way to induce directional browsing... an opportunity for planned serendipity.

I liked this particular list so much, I added it as a WorldCat.org list:

100 Best First Lines from Novels

Fun stuff. Happy browsing.

• Quickly rate items on a five-star scale
• Create and save drafts of your reviews
• Write a review in your preferred language

We'll add reviews from additional sources soon. For now, though, write a quick review of your favorite movie, book or article. On its detailed record, look for the “Review this item” link under the “Add to It” section.

Also new: Cover art added to lists

You may have seen full-color cover art on individual detailed records. Now you'll find cover art for your list items, too. For some reason, seeing all the covers makes me so happy. It's like it brings the books to life!

It's now that I can also reveal the prize--a brand-spankin' new WorldCat t-shirt!

If you haven't registered yet, take a minute today to do it now. If you're the lucky winner, we'll e-mail you privately and make sure you're willing to have your name published and get a few minutes of fame. We will ask you for your preferred postal mailing address, so your t-shirt arrives where you'd like it to.

If you're already registered, (and curious about how to get your hands on your own snappy WorldCat t-shirt) sign up to receive WorldCat news by e-mail. Of course, as a faithful blog reader you'll be totally up to date, but this way you're covered in case you take a holiday from your feedreader!

Don't worry if you're experiencing this problem. We are not losing your lists, we're just having trouble displaying them. As soon as this is resolved all of your lists will be available and should function normally.

If you haven't seen this issue, what happens is that your list of lists will disappear. For instance my list of list should be here:

http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/bobrobboy/lists

If you go to that page you may (or may not) see my list of 20 or so lists. The lists themselves are still there even if you can't see them. For instance my list of "Radio Shows from WorldCat's Long Tail" is always accessible even if my list of list is not showing up.

This problem appears in the drop-down menu from the search result page and the item page which can make it difficult to add items to your lists.

New lists will likely appear if you happen to create one; however creating a new list could cause your old lists to run through the disappearing act.

Again, rest assured that we'll get your lists back in order as quickly as possible, and even improve a few things along the way. (Have you checked out our new reviews and ratings yet? Here's an example from my profile. Give them a whirl and let us know what you think.)

So what does this mean in terms of you and your local library? Quite a bit:

The Games
The first and most obvious (although maybe not if you think of your library only in terms of books): there’s a good chance many of the games you’re looking for, and shelling out 50 bucks or more for, are sitting on the shelves of your local library. And don’t forget the walkthrough books. Many libraries even loan game consoles.

The Job Market
An industry growing this fast and pulling in this much revenue is hot for new talent. From coding to writing to art and animation, your library is the perfect place to start researching the ins and outs of the business and what it takes to get your foot in the door. Here is some material to get started with, but there are dozens more. Your reference librarians are also a great resource to get the best information in your hands if you’re having trouble locating what you need. Don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Critical Analysis
From health concerns and marketing sex and violence to children to improved hand-eye coordination and visual analysis of information, there’s no shortage of critical material regarding video games. The industry and its products are valid topics for academic consideration at all levels of education, and your library can serve as a research hub.

If you have friends who haven't created a profile on WorldCat yet, now would be a good time to mention it to them. We're going to be watching that registered users count pretty carefully until we hit the 200,000 milestone. There's even talk of featuring the 200,00th profile in some way...stay tuned for details!

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.