Greetings!
I would like to point out three important developments in our ability to search for and access book information.
Get-It
First: We now have our "Get-It" Service:
http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/circ/get-it.htm
What does this mean? It means that you can now use this catalog:
http://umnlib.oit.umn.edu/F?func=find-b-0&local_base=umn01pub
and search all U of MN campuses just as you would our campus. You can mark "Get-It" for any circulating book held at any campus, including UMD, and it will be pulled and held for you at our Circulation desk. UMD requests are filled within one day and requests from other campuses can take 2 to 4 working days. This is faster than Inter Library Loan as there is no intermediary processing your request. This is available for faculty, staff and students. FREE! All University of Minnesota book resources are now at your finger tips!!
And we still have our Inter Library Loan Service for sources not in our University system:
http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/ill/index.htm
WorldCat
How do you find books not owned by the University of Minnesota? Use our WorldCat database, which is directly linked to our UMD Inter Library Loan system.
In the past two years, the WorldCat database has grown 100% and now contains over 200 million records (including books, media and archival records):
http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/2010/201047.htm
You can access the WorldCat on my Launch Pad or directly here:
http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/lurl/LibGo.php?TiPrimaryID=195
Google Books:
Located here:
http://books.google.com/bkshp?hl=en&tab=wp
While the WorldCat is currently a much larger database, Google Books allows all scanned words in every book to be searched. You can find the needle in the haystack, and often you view some scanned pages for context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_books
And, Google Books plans on growing!
June 2010:Google passes 12 million books scanned.
August 2010: It was announced that Google intends to scan all known existing 129,864,880 books by the end of the decade, accounting to over 4 billion digital pages and two trillion words in total.
If you have questions or comments, please call or email.
Thanks!!!
