On the advanced search page for WorldCat there appears to be 30 different ways to search including: access search, accession #, 6 ways to search by author, language phrase, material type, material type phrase, musical composition, musical composition phrase, notes/comments, publisher, publisher location, standard number, ISBN, ISSN, 7 ways to search by subject, and title phrase and series title. Whew!
For the first search I typed in The Hunger Games. I got 104 results. Under item 1, there were 5042 libraries worldwide that had that item. The top library in the list was Alexander Mitchell Library. I noticed that the libraries listed seemed to be in South Dakota. The call number for the first item was PZ7.C6837 and PS 3603.04558 the Dewey classification was FIC. The author has written the sequel books Catching Fire and Mockingjay and also the 5 books in the Gregor the Overlander Series. I clicked on the subject "Survival - Juvenile Fiction" and got a lengthy list that included Catching Fire, Mockingjay, and Julie of the Wolves. Other information in the record included almost everything you could think of. There was the year, the physical description of the book, the ISBN, the genre, awards, language, series, descriptors, and even the vendor information. In short, it had everything you woud expect to see in a catalogue record and more!
In OAIster the record I chose was the "Effects of Maintenance Treatments on Asphalt, Concrete Pavement Management". (A fascinating topic if ever there was one!) It appeared to be a document prepared by the SDDOT about roads. There were two links next to access, WorldCat and SDDOT. Unfortunately, when I clicked on WorldCat a message popped up that said, "item requested cannot be found". It clarified that items were added or updated daily and I may need to try my request later although it did add that the item may have been deleted or moved. I gave it a second chance and got the same error message. Well, no problem, my item had two access links so I tried the other one from SDDOT. This one said, "Specified request cannot be executed from current applicant pool". So I suppose the mysteries of asphalt and concrete road maintenance will remain a mystery, at least to me. I was hoping for the full text of the document and assume that is what one would find under other records.
I checked many of my fellow blogger's posts and found that no one had quite gotten to the WorldCat assignment yet. It must be a busy week in libraryland.
Hi, still learning. Re: library holdings for _Hunger Games_: WorldCat displays holdings from our state first in alphabetical order, then region, then nation, then international. Your OAIster search turned into a bummer. One of the problems with digital information is that it can be taken down without notice, and the record here does not get updated. OAIster really does have a lot of good info in it for serious researchers. You would at least know that this document existed, and if necessary, could call SDDOT and ask about it. Thanks for sharing your discoveries--and for being the first to tackle WorldCat!
ReplyDeleteDear Still Learning,
ReplyDeleteThe State Library has the title: "Effects of Maintenance Treatments on Asphalt, Concrete Pavement Management". It's a 2001 state document. If you're interested you can ILL, the call number is SD TD 125:SD2001-03-F (OC#81256492). A mystery no longer, a good bedtime read, put you right out! It must be 60 pages of b/w graphs and text.
Barb from PubPlace
So, could you read that article and let us all know what exactly the effects of maintenance treatments are? LOL! Some "Cliff Claven" knowledge for ya!
ReplyDelete