Open WorldCatWhy open library data to search engines?
The Open WorldCat program, launched December 2004, opened WorldCat's union catalog to web partnerships and heralded the possibility of encountering WorldCat data while searching the open web. Partner search engines now include Google, Google Books, Yahoo! Search, and Windows Live Academic as well as many online booksellers (OCLC maintains a web page listing current partners).
Library Results through Web Search
Google "find in a library" (include quotes)
Yahoo! site:worldcatlibraries.org (no spaces)
This search syntax, while logical, is not entirely user-friendly (nor entirely consistent in the results rendered). Also (and quite obviously), users who are unaware of the need to employ a certain syntax will not use it.
Have you ever seen an Open WorldCat item appear in a Google search result set that wasn’t intentionally limited to Open WorldCat results? For some items, these results will appear on the first page, but many are buried deep within the myriad results pages. What then, might be another way for libraries to push library bibliographic data available onto the web and into users' workflows? Enter WorldCat.org.