From the beginning, I've noticed that I've had difficulties of finding information about how WorldCat searches for materials. The help file, which I discussed in detail in my last blog posting, is very little help for searching WorldCat. As I mentioned previously, I found that there were search tactics that were omitted by the help, including truncation and wildcards. Another difficulty of searching WorldCat is that there is no search box available in the Help section. I find this makes it more difficult to navigate, since there are many different areas of the help file that are hyperlinked, rather than just listed. This means that if one would like to use the browser's Find function, one must go to each hyperlinked subject area.
I realize that WorldCat is meant to serve a larger audience than just academia. Most of the patrons using WorldCat would probably not care that this documentation is not available, or that it is lacking in clarity and completeness. My concern is for the librarians and patrons of academia using WorldCat Local. How do they refine their searches? How can they more accurately find materials? And who will care enough to make a search guide that is more complete? With all of this in mind, I went searching for a good resource to help me with my searches.
First, I found help from the University of Arizona's libraries. I soon noticed that the dropdowns and limiters looked like something other than WorldCat's website. I realized as soon as I saw the limiters that this was a search guide for WorldCat's FirstSearch. I moved on, hoping to find something that explained WorldCat in more detail. Next, I went on to find the DeSales Libraries homepage, which had a much more promising screenshot of the tabbed version of WorldCat's search box. I soon found, however, that this, too, was a dead end. The search guide referred more to WorldCat Local and its uses for
Finally, after much searching, I found what I believed I was looking for. WorldCat has a channel on YouTube!
The name WorldCatUser made me very hopeful, but after watching all of the videos, I still did not see a user's guide to using WorldCat.org (not WorldCat FirstSearch). Here is an interesting video that I did find:
Unfortunately, this YouTube channel did not lead me to a search guide, however, there is a very well-made walk-through of using WorldCat's list features. Other videos help librarians to get their patrons to find them on WorldCat. I feel that it does show promise. I hope more videos are to come!
I find it very strange that there are no other up-to-date guides on the Internet that are posted by librarians or others that have researched search information regarding WorldCat. As I have proven above, I searched all over the Internet looking for guides that would tell me about stop words, proximity, or wildcards, but none were found. Most of the searching guides that I did find were for WorldCat FirstSearch, which is a paid subscription. There is other information out there about how to use other features of WorldCat, but these presuppose that the user has already found the item on WorldCat.org.
Sources:
Union Lists: WorldCat. (2009). Retrieved October 5, 2009, from University of Arizona, Tutorials website, http://www.library.arizona.edu/help/tutorials/unionlists/worldcat.html
Test Worldcat Search Box. (2009). Retrieved November 14, 2009, from DeSales University, LibGuides website,
http://desales.libguides.com/worldcatlocal
Locating Research Materials Using Meta-Catalogs: Worldcat. (2006). Retrieved November 14, 2009, from Connexions, Travelers in the Middle East Archive, http://cnx.org/content/m12523/latest/
WorldCatUser Channel. (2008). Retrieved November 24, 2009, from YouTube, personal user profile, http://www.youtube.com/user/WorldCatUser
WorldCatUser (Profile name of Producer). (2008). WorldCat Lists
[Online Video]. Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vos5ivBeZ5c
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