Management Note; New WorldCat Functionality

Hi all!

I wanted to take and do a double post today. The first is this, a note from me about some new functionality. The second post will be the regular feature...that is history.

Being a librarian, to me there is nothing greater than finding information, particularly the information I'm looking for. Be it a book, trivia, history or just whatever, knowing I have access to it is great.

So, to help me AND you, I've put a search box up on the blog from WorldCat:



Nope, I'm not getting any money for this...I just put it on the blog so if you run across a book or topic and you want to see if your library has it, just type it in the search box and see what happens. If you are overseas and not in the USA, it should still work. Would you let me know if it doesn't? I would appreciate it.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled history post!

Controversial....but very, very useful!

Some folks feel threatened, others are glad. As a librarian and historian, access to history is always important. I guess that's why I absolutely love Google Books. In fact, it's one of the few places that heads the top of my list when doing historical research.

For example, I was doing some research on Ernie Pyle recently and just flipped to Google books and started looking up World War II themes, just to see what was there. Here's a short list (with links) of some of the good stuff I found:

"Okay Girls, Man Your Bunks"

Personal biography about life in the WAVES during WW II.

Green Light!: Men of the 81st Troop Carrier Squadron Tell Their Story

Lots have been written about the paratroopers themselves, what with Band of Brothers, etc. However, they did have to get to the drop zone somehow. This book tells you how.

Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team

Written by the great author Steinbeck, this books details the trials and tribulations of flying the heavies during WW II.


Now some of the books are previews but many are the entire book. With the option to create your own personal library as well as links to where the books can be bought, this historical research options cannot be overlooked.

Here's the link directly to Google Books as well as the post about it on Wikipedia. Have Fun!!

Google Books

Wikipedia's entry

The End of Libraries?

I hear this all the time: " Libraries are gone, dead, kaput...." However, I'm not buying it. I saw a post yesterday on Slashdot (link: http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/01/18/0420247.shtml) about the impatience of today's kids and implications for the library. I can't deny that it's good: Google books, Wikipedia, etc. however,there is still something about a library that I can't get online. Being a history major, maybe it's the sense of history. Maybe the fact that there are millions of books in the library that are not online and probably never will be. Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic about books. I'm sure the measure of truth is somewhere in between it all.