WorldCat, etc.

In working with the NEA's Big Read titles I was surprised to find The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick listed as one of their great classics. So, that title came to mind when searching WorldCat. The first item that came up was The Best American Short Stories of the Century owned by 2,307 libraries. In the full record I found the title listed in the contents; it's really more of a novella and again I was surprised to see it included in a short story collection. The first library listed was Augustana College in Sioux Falls, followed by other SD locations then those from Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. Is there a pattern there? The record gives the LC and Dewey call numbers, plus the Fic designation for fiction. When clicking on the editor of the collection, John Updike, I found 4,795 items! Back in the results list I went to item five which lists the title as a separate volume. It lists the title as including both a short story and a novella – mystery solved! Ozick has 536 items of which 48 are sound. And one is the NEA recording "An Introduction to the Shawl" by Cynthia Ozick. Clicking on the subject Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Fiction and browsing through I discovered Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli – need to add this title to my "want to read" list. The investigation could go on and on – what an easy way to discover what exists out there and who owns it – all in one stop searching!

OAIster (still picturing the cat in pearls from your previous webinar) found a little gem from 1931 entitled Occurrence of the alligatoroid genus Allognathosuchus in the Lower Oligocene. This immediately caught my eye as I was browsing the results list because I have found pieces of prehistoric alligator when out on a dig with the Timber Lake Museum! It was published by the Field Museum in Chicago and digitized by the University of Illinois. Wow – you can read online, Kindle, PDF, etc. A little obscure topic, I know, but when you can't find it anywhere else, look here, plus it had already been downloaded 144 times.