[Web4lib] Query: union search for online books

[Henry Gladney]

Re: use of WorldCat

No results match your search for *'ti:Elementary Principles in Statistical
Mechanics au:Gibbs, Josiah
Willard<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AElementary+Principles+in+Statistical+Mechanics+au%3AGibbs%2C+Josiah+Willard&qt=facetNavigation>'
> 'English<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AElementary+Principles+in+Statistical+Mechanics+au%3AGibbs%2C+Josiah+Willard&qt=facetNavigation&fq=ln%3Aeng>'
> 'Internet Resource<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AElementary+Principles+in+Statistical+Mechanics+au%3AGibbs%2C+Josiah+Willard&qt=facetNavigation&fq=ln%3Aeng+%3E+dt%3Aurl>'
> '1850..1910'*.

No results match your search for *'ti:Pymalion
au:Shaw<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3APymalion+au%3AShaw&qt=facetNavigation>'
> 'English<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3APymalion+au%3AShaw&qt=facetNavigation&fq=ln%3Aeng>'
> 'Internet Resource'*.

I also looked for Goethe's Faust in German, and Heinrich Hertz's Principles
of Mechanics (english translation) without finding online versions via
WorldCat.  For these, Google searches worked, but even they required more
effort than would be needed by a good federated search service.

BTW, the difficulty experienced with WorldCat led me to provide
comment/suggestion feedback to that site's managers.

Best wishes, Henry

H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.     HMG Consulting http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/
(408)867-5454


On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 11:53, Brian Gray <mindspiral at gmail.com> wrote:

> Are these digitized book records finding their way into WorldCat?
>
> Brian Gray
> mindspiral at gmail.com
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Henry Gladney <hgladney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In recent years several giant digitizations of (mostly) out-of-copyright
>> books have been mounted, some by commercial enterprises and some by
>> academic
>> institutions.  My relatively cursory Google search has not led me to a Web
>> service from which one can mount a search that inspects a large fraction
>> of
>> these to determine whether or not a book (or a scholarly article) is
>> available in digital form.  (I am aware of Google Book Search (see
>> http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html ) but currently
>> believe its scope to be limited.)
>>
>> I wonder, has the kind of service been programmed and made available?  (I
>> believe that providing it would be a relatively straightforward
>> programming
>> task.  If not, perhaps some list member will take it on.)   If you know of
>> an example, I would be grateful for a pointer to it.  I suspect that other
>> members of this distribution list would be as interested as I am.
>>
>> Best wishes, Henry
>>
>> H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.     HMG Consulting http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/
>> (408)867-5454
>> _______________________________________________
>> Web4lib mailing list
>> Web4lib at webjunction.org
>> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>>
>>
>