WorldCat , and Sources for Interlibrary Loans and On-Line Research

Arturo,

Professionally, I have been doing technical, economic, and demographic
research for decades, - - - and genealogical for the last several years.

I am fortunate to be in Southern California, which has a multitude of
University libraries in the region, and have had access to all their
libraries, and also governmental (cities, counties, state and Federal
libraries), - - - and, over the years, have spent many, many hours per week
going from library to library hunting for and consulting those books that I
could find.

Now, a quick inquiry in www.worldcat.org lets me know which libraries
throughout the world have a book that I would wish to consult.

Already in my Internet "favorites" are the addresses of such places as the
central cataloguing for all the libraries in the University of California
System (10 campuses, plus its Digital Library, Bancroft, Melvyl, etc.) and,
similarly, State of California Universities, governmental libraries, etc.
Basically all of their holdings are available by interlibrary loans, by
"filling-in an order/request slip" and have them delivered to the closest
San Diego Library of my choice.

Additionally, in the County of San Diego we have a "San Diego Circuit"
consortium of 8 nearby University Libraries and 34 County Libraries whose
books can be ordered online and delivered for checkout at any nearby
Library of choice.

All of these are borrowings of the actual books but, as if this weren't
enough, the University of California has partnered since last year with
Google to digitize millions of its library books, and put them online (at
books.google.com ) for public use.

So, Arturo, are we living in bountiful times or not? We are becoming
capable of on-line tapping the "knowledge of the world." ... And then, we
add the gigantic digitizing (and indexing) project of the Mormon Church.

If I sound ecstatic, it is only because I am out of my mind !! And can you
imagine if these tools had been available when I was going through college,
or doing aerospace research some decades ago?

Best regards,

Efrain
San Diego, California

> [Original Message]
> From: arturoramos
> To:
> Date: 8/1/2007 2:12:19 PM
> Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] WorldCat and Interlibrary Loan
>
>
> Has anyone used WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org) to locate hard-to-find
materials and then requested them by interlibrary loan?