> I tend to agree with Jonathan Rochkind that having every library's bib
> record turn up as a Google snippet would be unwelcome. Better to
> mediate the access to local library copies with something more
> generic.
So when someone searches for a book in Google they should see every
online bookstore's page for the book, every social reading page for
the book (LibraryThing, Goodreads etc), every review of the book on
the blog, ... and buried somewhere a single "library" link (i.e.
WorldCat)? Where they have to manually enter their location to see
local listings. [1]
If you were Joe Average Reader searching for a book in Google, would
it be more welcome that you could stumble onto a website that showed
you all the local library holdings ("stumble" because who knows that
that's what worldcat.org is?), or that the holding records for the
local libraries all showed up in the top 10 or 20 results because
Google knows your location so makes them extra relevant?
Perhaps we could even have both - if most libraries' OPACs were
"online" and each record page linked to the appropriate WorldCat
record page then WorldCat would have a much larger pagerank than it
does now.
David
[1] Maybe it works better in the US, but even though it can tell I'm
physically at the University of Waikato Library and offers me links to
our link resolver and catalogue, it can't tell where I am and I have
to type in "New Zealand" to see what other libraries hold the item.
