[WEB4LIB] OCLC WorldCat access via abebooks

[Peter Scott]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Jerry Kuntz wrote:

> Discovered this at the blog Boing Boing:
 
> "Library census. Amazon salesrankings are interesting, but what about
> the noncommercial world of library shelves? Wouldn't it be cool to
> discover which libraries are holding onto how many copies of your
> favorite books? The Online Computer Library Center provides just such
> a search -- for a fee. However, Abebooks (an online antiquarian and
> rare book-search service) has a free back-door into the service.
> Here's how it works: Go to this site and enter a search for a title
> that isn't in any of Abebooks' members' catalogs. You'll be presented
> with a link that activates a back-door search of the OCLC's library
> database, which returns a list of all the American libraries that have
> a copy on their shelves. Complicated, but cool."

The other interesting news about abebooks is that last week they became a
Commission Junction merchant. This means that CJ associates can make money
from "selling" abebooks titles. I won't go into the details here, but if
you want more info ask me off-list.