Thursday, June 02, 2005

Librarian As Geek

We belong to the big library network, OCLC. Their WorldCat database reflects the collections of about 54,000 libraries, lists about 56 million separate titles (books, archives, audio, video, etc.), with 983,212,703 million 'holdings' (libraries saying they own one of those aforementioned titles). 983,212,726... 983,212,864... 983,214,372...
       Huh? You can watch WorldCat grow. You can entertain yourself by staring, entranced, while first the Free Public Library of New Jersey adds Eka ja de cinagari by Bakula Dave (in Gujarati), then Colby College adds a recording on CD of Frontier by Yoshida Kyodai, then the Kansas State Library adds a document called State Government from the Kansas Legislative Research Department, then...
       Well, ok. So you might rate the spectacle as barely better than watching your laundry go 'round. But for librarians it's addictive.
       You do have access to the whole WorldCat database, but only from inside the library. The link is in the bottom right corner of the table at the top of the Internet Starting Points.

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