I started looking at WorldCat at school and of course had to pause to help some patrons. When I went back, my session had expired. In order to get back in I had to enter the school’s barcode and password to open WorldCat again. I’ve never had that issue before. Once I was back in, I decided to look up a book that I could not find a marc record for. This will help me create the record for Destiny so this very excited student can get her hands on the book. The book I searched for was Lullaby by Amanda Hocking. The first result is in 472 libraries worldwide. When I click on the link for worldwide libraries I find that Alexander Mitchell Library is at the top, followed by Siouxland Library. I like how the libraries are organized by those of the surrounding states; Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wyoming. The class descriptors are LC: PZ7.H65828; Dewey: [Fic] . Amanda Hocking has written the series called The Trylle Series and Lullaby is the second book in the Watersong Novel series. I selected sirens from the subjects and was shown a result list with 35 book results and 15 each of sound and internet links. Finding books with a related subject is something I show my students in our own library system. I like to use this in WorldCat to search out books on subjects that either my teachers or students are heavily using. There are the usual useful tools such as sorting, related subjects, limit results, related authors, email bibliography, print, export and help. It is always very helpful to be able to limit/focus my searches. I found the WorldCat Hot Topics fun to explore as well.
I used OAIster to search South Dakota and selected “Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, May 15, 1942” because it sounded intriguing. Selecting the access link under the title brought me to the Minnesota Digital Library. This was a typed letter that was fun to read, understanding that people communicated differently in 1942. The letter is copyrighted and permission is not given for reproduction. Lower down on the page there is a transcript of the letter for easier reading. I could get lost searching items in OAIster.
Thanks for this post! You made some excellent discoveries. Your description of using related subjects to find other books is very well done.
ReplyDeleteWorldCat is set up to ask for a login both inside a school and outside to allow interlibrary loan by libraries. If you have been in other resources, sometimes you aren't asked to login. It is a small hiccup in the authentication system.
-Julie