Options for looking beyond the WCU catalog
WorldCat is a great resources, but its size and the number of people who import records into it can make it very messy and hard to search. I think this has gotten significantly more problematic over the last few years. If you are struggling with WorldCat, here are some other options.
- Worldcat.org
- pros: really large catalog of catalogs, including tons of really old books; easy to see how widely held a book is; uses subject headings
- cons: the search interface is kind of terrible; often multiple, slightly different entries for a book or for different editions of a book
- Amazon.com
- pros: familiar interface; will often give book previews/show table of contents
- cons: has an advanced search, but it isn't that good; does not use subject heading; lots of non-scholarly books show up
- Google books
- pros: familiar interface; best for book previews; often has full text of pre-1923 books (out of copyright); links to Worldcat (Find in a Library feature)
- cons: does not use subject headings; lots of non-scholarly books show up
- Catalog of another university. Most academic libraries still allow their catalogs to be searched by anyone. So you can take a subject heading you found in the WCU catalog and try it in the catalog of a bigger and/or wealthier university (Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, UC-Berkele, etc.).
- pros: subject heading searching; less messy than WorldCat
- cons: unfamiliar interface, no way to quick check if WCU libraries own the book.
