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how to search in worldcat |
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WorldCat is an all-encompassing online catalog made up of thousands of individual online catalogs. The WorldCat database contains the records of millions of items (books, interviews, cd-roms, videos, journals, etc.) owned by libraries around the world.
Searching in WorldCat
- Click on the Advanced link; you will be taken to the Advanced Search Screen.
- You need to limit your search to books in English. In the Limit to: section, find the Language drop-down menu and select English in the Limit type to: section, and click in the box next to Books. Finally, in the Rank by: section at the bottom, select Date. This limit tells the computer to display the records with the most recently-published items at the top of the list.
- Let's try a search for books on character education at the secondary level. In the search box type character education and secondary.
- This demonstration was completed in July 2006 and at this time there were 191 books written in English whose records contained the terms character education and secondary. If you ran this search again today, there will be more records available because WorldCat is continuously updated as new items are added to WorldCat.
- Left click on the titles of a couple of the books and take a look at the Descriptor fields (Descriptor is another word for Subject Heading). Notice that the terminology used in place of character education is Moral education.
- For this demonstration, record #3 Character: A Guide for Middle Grade Students was selected by left clicking on the title. Scroll down and click on the Descriptor Moral education (secondary)--handbooks, manuals, etc. This brings you to a list of all books that have been assigned the Descriptor.
- At the top of the Results screen and each individual Detailed Record screen is a gray bar with a number of buttons. WorldCat allows users to email records.
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