Lesson 7 - World Cat

I had heard of World Cat. I'd never used it, but thought the cataloging librarians here used it occasionally. I'd never thought of using it for Inter Library Loans. That said, here's what I found.

I started looking for a fiction book in a series I'd started reading. I thought the next book was called Cracked. When I put that in the search, I got 21 results, none of them the book I thought I was looking for. The first book I did find was titled Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature. 804 libraries worldwide have this book. The top listing was BHSU. The call number for this book says PN56.3.B55 Dewey 810/.9/352. This book was written by three authors and when I clicked on the first one listed, I got an erotica book by her. No thanks!!

I went back and searched using the author's name of the book I was looking for and I found her first book. I decided that was a better way for me to search. Then I played around with genre/form search and put in dystopian society with no results. I changed the search to science fiction and got 52,418 matches. I thought this would be a great way to help the students that come in looking for books in different genres to play their genre bingo game. Sometimes I'm just brain-dead when they ask me for suggestions!

In the first searches indexes, I cheated and looked at the World Almanac listing for things I was pretty sure I'd find. Then I checked the ERIC database. I've recently had a teacher asking how to get into ERIC. Now if it doesn't have the full text, I can find out which libraries in SD I could get them from. I noticed clicking on the "i" icon just let me know why I might want to use this database.

On to OAIster, I put in SD in the basic search and got 8,075 results, like other bloggers had listed. Then I switched to the Advanced search and got 764 results. It was interesting to look at what was available. There was a listing for Prints and Photographs for John C. H. Grabill Collection that in the abstract said he'd set up a studio in Sturgis, where I'm at. I was not authorized to view the page. I was curious to see what photos I'd find, since it says they are early western photos of the settlement in SD and Wyo. I also tried narrowing my search to just Sturgis and Fort Meade. There weren't many pictures available.

I'd like to explore this database more for the ERIC articles!