Wow, Real Reference

I do a lot of looking up of titles, or subjects or sometimes even characters (do you have any Barbie books?) I search the catalog and find what the patron wants, or sometimes I don't, which is where another type of search comes in. I admit that I use Amazon to find titles. Their catalog is much easier to use when you don't know an exact title or author or maybe just have a vague subject(she said it was about a boy and an elephant in Pakistan...). Sometimes when that doesn't work, I go to Google. There are such tools as Books In Print, but that really gives you the same info as Amazon and you have to sign in/remember how to get there, etc. The same is true with the OCLC World Cat database. The only reason you would use this is if you needed to find out if a book is available somewhere in the world. Usually the material would be something obscure--although you can find anything that is cataloged at a library that participates in the OCLC and it will tell you what, when, where and how many, then give you a link to the library catalogs that own it.

I think I used World Cat once in library school for a class exercise. I used it again today to find whether libraries had Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs from 1885-1905. Some do, mostly on micro fische. A gentleman came in asking if we could get them through interlibrary loan. I requested them for him through interlibrary loan. He needed them so that he could look at the pictures of stoves from that time period so that he could build a believable set. Pretty cool.

Another question I got today was for an article about eskimos that was in a 1971 National Geographic. Our periodicals databases don't go back that far and we don't keep physical copies at the branch for more than 2 years. I looked the article up online--the German version that was published in November is available on their website and I found that the English version was published in the February issue of the same year. I called the downtown library, and surprisingly, they had that issue in the lending library and were able to send it to the Green Lake Library so the patron could pick it up there, near where he lives.

Every question is important, but I really love these kind where I have to do a little digging. They might not be as satisfying if I couldn't find the information, but that doesn't happen often.