Ever searched for books or journals in the JHU online catalog and not found what you’re looking for? Know what your next step should be?
Those of you who said “WorldCat!” can pat yourselves on the back. WorldCat is close to being “all the books in the world.” Close. It’s your next step if you didn’t find what you were looking for in the JHU catalog, or if you want to look for MORE.
WorldCat includes materials from all US research libraries, many public libraries, and an increasing number of foreign libraries.In fact, it’s so big, you can find something even doing an absurdly random search on something like “dog sled” + “sewing machine”. Try it!
WorldCat is the database our Interlibrary Loan folks use to order books. And the beautiful feature of it is – you can place an Interlibrary Loan order right from your WorldCat search results. Just look for:
“Borrow from another library” link in the full record.
You will find a link to WorldCat from the Sheridan Libraries homepage and from all the various Research Guides by Subject as well. It’s also included in many of the Subject lists for databases, and conveniently under “W” in the Alphabetical database list.
I love WorldCat! I search for a lot of obscure books, and it’s the only way I can make sure I get them…
Thanks for this great overview of WorldCat.org. And your readers will also be pleased to know you can create a free account to create lists with notes, save complex searches and get automatically formatted citations through WorldCat.org. And you’ll find new e-content appearing every day from libraries around the world.