I was poking around Google Labs, and noticed they have a new feature called Google Scholar, which “enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research”. Totally crazy.
So while I was testing that out, I noticed these little “Library Search” buttons next to some of the returns that use something called WorldCat to help you locate copies of the book at a library near you, be it public, or private.
WorldCat is pretty amazing, and accessible from Google. I’ve found two options:
1) Search for something and include the term “find in a library”. This will return any library matches at the top, but it seems a little sparse. Good when you know a specific title.
2) Do a site-specific search using “site:worldcatlibraries.org” and a term. For example, “propaganda site:worldcatlibraries.org” will return 4,540 results which can be physically located at libraries in real life. You can toss in any number of terms to help focus the search, like authors, dates, publishers, etc.
Holy crap. My dream of becoming a spooky library dweller is now twelve steps closer!
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