OCLC stands for Ohio something-or-another, and it was a primitive source on the computer (pre-www) for librarians to get cataloging information for books and other materials. Back in the dark ages when I was in library school, I remember having to log in to the OCLC system and jump through all sorts of hoops in order to find bibliographic information about a given book. But it was really nifty, no more cataloging and figuring out stuff all by yourself. Just check OCLC and copy what you needed and check it against the actual book that you wanted to put into your library.

Well, now OCLC has something called WorldCat, a unified, more-or-less, catalog of lots and lots of libraries. And they just came out with a search box which you can install on your website or blog that enables you to type in a title or an author, get a list of books that match, and then get a list of libraries near you that have a copy of the book you’re looking for.

The main attraction of the site is the WorldCat search box, which allows Web users to search the entire WorldCat database with the method most familiar to them: simple keywords. Search results in this public view of WorldCat are generated directly on WorldCat.org, instead of through Google or Yahoo! Search. Just as in Open WorldCat, each linked search result leads to the WorldCat information page for an individual item. There the user can enter geographic information, receive a list of nearby WorldCat libraries that own the item, and link right to a library’s online catalog record to initiate circulation activity or access electronic content directly.

I put a search box in my sidebar, so if you see something here at Semicolon that you’d like to check out of the library, enter the title in the search box and get a list of libraries in your area with your book.

My, how times they are a’changin’!