This is exciting news! And, I can’t believe that we haven’t blogged
explicitly about WorldCat before! It is
an incredible resource for genealogists!
First
part of the press release and then let’s talk a bit about why WorldCat is such
a great resource to anyone doing research.
DUBLIN, Ohio, January 31, 2013—OCLC and FamilySearch International, the
largest genealogy organization in the world, have signed an agreement that will
enrich WorldCat and FamilySearch services with data from both organizations to
provide users with more resources for improved genealogy research.
Under this new partnership, OCLC will incorporate data from
FamilySearch’s catalog of genealogical materials into WorldCat, and
FamilySearch will use OCLC cataloging services to continue to catalog its
collections in WorldCat. FamilySearch will also use the WorldCat Search API to
incorporate WorldCat results into search results returned by FamilySearch
genealogy services...
WorldCat
is a great resource! I use it all the
time to identify books (and other media) that might have relevance to my
current research project – abstracted records (county, state, religious,
newspaper, etc), church or community histories, family histories, etc. Then I use it to determine “where” the found
item of interest is – hopefully in the State Library of North Carolina. If not held locally, I then determine where it
is held and then I either use interlibrary loan (ILL
For
example, I searched on “Wake
County Missouri
This is why I find WorldCat invaluable. One place where I am able
to examine what is held by a lot of libraries! With the new partnership with FamilySearch,
instead of independently going to WorldCat and the FamilySearch catalog, which
is something I am always doing, I will now be able to go to one place and
search both! Identifying genealogical
and historical research material just keeps getting easier!
Are you in love with WorldCat as
much as I am? What has been your best “find”
using it?
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World Cat found 4 boxes of family journals, records sermons and other papers for me. I had some family information that referred to the Taylor Family Papers. I wasn't sure there was such a thing, but about ten years ago I placed a request with my own library for "Taylor Family Papers." They reported to me, having searched the World Cat, that the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor had something by this name. I called the library because Taylor is a very common surname and, indeed these were records from my family.
ReplyDeleteJournals my great grandmother kept from the age of 16 that describe life of the time, the courtship of my great grandfather of her and her decision finally to marry him
Five years worth of letters sent by her son from the Philippines, very descriptive of the places where he worked and visited, where he had gone to teach
Letters that describe what a difficult woman her mother was (She came to visit and went about town defaming Lizzie's new husband, as an example.)
A marriage license for Lizzie's father for a prior marriage I hadn't known existed
Stories my great grandfather wrote describing his childhood in frontier Michigan.
My sister and I have made three week-long trips to this library to read & copy these records. My sister has written a book, using these records, to describe daily life in the mid-nineteenth century. I have not only a family tree, but an understanding of who all these people were and how they lived.
Whenever I want to locate anything that has been referenced in something I'm reading I go to OCLC. Sometimes I'm really lucky and find that whatever I'm searching for is available at one of my local libraries; sometimes the closest library is only an hour away; sometimes I need to make use of ILL (Houston, TX, is really not exactly next door to Orlando, FL!); but very seldom has OCLC let me down. I recommend it to everyone I talk to who does genealogy. And now that OCLC and Family Search will be working in conjunction with each other--definitely reason for "the genealogy happy dance"!
ReplyDeleteI was able to find family bible records housed at the State Library of Virginia. They had digitized them and the link came up after a family name search. This is a great way to find out about digital collections.
ReplyDeleterecent post about a neat and newer feature of worldcat, Research Tip: Making lists in the WorldCat Library Catalog, http://lit.blogs.bucknell.edu/2013/02/20/research-tip-making-lists-in-the-worldcat-library-catalog/
ReplyDelete