I've run across the WorldCat site before, and hadn't really thought about it, but it is cool in a Web 2.0 sort of way. Let's you search for books and then find nearby libraries that have them.

I think you have to register to make it work.

It doesn't seem to insist on registration although some features will probably require it. Registration seems to be free, in any event.

I searched for Harry Potter and the goblet of fire and entered my home (UK) post code. The search showed 3988 results for nearby libraries. Presumably they were ordered by closeness, which is curious, as the first one was the American University of Afghanistan, Kabul, Afghanistan!

The other nine results on the page were, in fact, nearby libraries in London.

Maybe you have a cousin in Kabul. The Raj stretched far and wide. (NB: I never registered for it, and it lists libraries in local cities for me.)

[Closed that parenthesis.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Interesting. I put in the book that Z had recommended in another thread: Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact. It automatically put the zip code where I am (Washington DC) in and found books in New York and New Jersey. I finally realized the problem and put my home zip code in. The 2 closest libraries are Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, though I doubt I can check out from either of them. In fact, they were almost all university libraries, except for the Library of Congress, the Canadian Museum of Civilization Library, the NY Public Library - Research, the Swiss National Library (in Bern, Switzerland), and the Unisa: Muckleneuk Main Cam (Pretoria, South Africa). The farthest library was 8900 miles; the closest being 5 miles. That's a great site, z! Thank you!

Wouldn't it be amazing to get a book you've written in this many different (158) libraries, including places like the Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge? I guess the best I will ever do is to read a book that well regarded.

If you forget the WorldCat link, there's an easy way to get into it, because it's part of one of Google's functions.

1. open a google screen and at the top, where it says "Web Images Video News Maps Gmail more", select "Books" under the "more" tab.
2. search for any word or phrase at all (the idea is to bring up a list of books) and then from that list select any book at all.
3. in the right box of the page that comes up (you may have to scroll down a bit) is link saying Find this book in a library. That link will take you to the WorldCat site.

You can set your location by city, postal code, and country.

I never really thought of WordCat as something non-librarians would even care much about. Can't you just go to your local library and ask them to get whatever you want on interlibrary loan if they don't own it? That is what we use WorldCat for - to locate which libraries we can borrow things from when we don't own them.

WorldCat is run by OCLC which is based here in Columbus. Would that be a place you'd like to tour while here for the Gathering in May, 2008?