Beyond Your Library
searching a world of library catalogs
Up to this point we've only discussed using the library catalog of a specific library. There are also shared catalogs you can use to search many catalogs all at once. Ask your librarian how you can get items you find in shared catalogs.
Some popular shared book catalogs:
- Worldcat.org: Search more than 10,000 libraries at the same time, then fill in your zip code and find out which libraries near you own items.
- ATHENA: A co-op of Nashville area libraries which includes Nashville Public, MTSU, APSU, Belmont, and Vanderbilt, among others.
- Google Books: Based on a different database structure than library catalogs. Rather than using records to represent books, Google has actually scanned the entire text of more than a million volumes (so far).
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