Open World Cat - check it out!

Search for an item in libraries near you: Enter title, subject or author

WorldCat.org >>

Rolling my own with Rollyo

Okey-dokey, that's pretty cool. I was thinking that I could just visit all my regular Interlibrary Loan sites (one at a time, natch) to search for whatever I needed in the Resource Sharing community, but now I see how this one ILL search engine could be uber-convenient. My own little search engine - not too shabby! For example, today I had to draft a response to a Rumor Mill question regarding the price of an interlibrary loan. Since this is a secret more closely guarded than the whereabouts of the key to Ft. Knox, naturally I went to tons of ILL sites/databases to find the cold hard facts. Ha!!! If only I had rolled my own ROLLYO ILL Site earlier, I could have gone home on time! Plus, it was totally simple to boost the Rollbar up in Firefox, no sweat. Please feel free to try it, right here on the old blog - go on, put in some swingin' ILL terminology you've always been curious about... I'll bet you don't know what IFM is, do you? After all, don't inquiring minds want to know?

Select...Interlibrary Loan RollingSearch The Web

Library Thing

Library Thing has got to be the greatest site of all time. It is so easy to use! Please scope out my catalog anytime - I mostly read mystery & history. The cataloging via tags is new to me; I am used to looking at regular bib records all day so it may take a bit of getting used to... I definitely see the need to be consistent with my tags, for my own ease of use as well for facilitating searches by other Library Thing users. The best part is peeking at other people's catalogs!

del.icio.us certainly is

I've always been a mega-bookmarker, but like most nerds I rarely went back because I could not find the good stuff. Not to mention the fact that I had different favorites on my home computer, library computer, and laptop. Thus, I am an instant fan of del.icio.us, because tagging to just one place makes a lot more sense to me.
I have already mentioned how much it appeals to me to get other people to do my research for me. I had stumbled across a few librarians' websites and/or del.icio.us accounts of interest to me, and subsequently set them up to feed into my newsreader. However, the domino effect of viewing so many del.icio.us networks of mutual interest (and subsequently RSSing them) has made this my new guilty pleasure. It's so easy (the new Firefox toolbar install sure beats IE) and so fun to navigate around del.icio.us that I almost feel like a really nosy neighbor...

Library Blogs

When I attended the 2.0-themed Northwestern Resource Sharing Conference in September, presenter Rachel Bridgewater mentioned feeding in Del.icio.us tags (from folks interested in the very same topics as you are) to one's own newsreader as a great way to get other people to do your research for you. I did not totally understand it at the time, but now I shall even receive her stuff via the Bloglines feed! Ha! I find the idea of glomming onto other researchers' results extremely appealing; nothing like having someone else, with perhaps a wee bit more time on their hands, do the digging for you...