Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: Find the gap

Find the gap

January 27, 2008 • Categories: Books, movies and reading ...

On page 3 of Helen Vendler's Our secret discipline: Yeats and lyric form I read:

And since there is no better motive for writing on a subject than a gap on library shelves, I began in earnest, some years ago, to study Yeats's lyric style.

I wonder is there a potential service here somewhere ;-) Proactive research recommendations based on patterns of publication!

Bookmark:

2 comments so far

Posted by Adam Chandler on January 28, 2008

Lorcan,

I have a question for you. In this post, you link to the worldcat.org record:
http://worldcat.org/oclc/141188066

How is/will that link be synthesized/merged into the same link by patrons using WorldCat Local? For example, at the U-Washington WorldCat Local site, when I pull up the same record the URL says:

http://uwashington.worldcat.org/oclc/141188066&referer=one_hit

Has OCLC thought the implications of this segregation through?

Thanks,
Adam

Posted by Mike Teets on February 4, 2008

Adam,

Yes OCLC has seriously considered the implications of the branded URL scheme in use in Worldcat Local. It has been a discussion topic with each of the pilot libraries as we have developed the service as well. We feel we have struck a suitable balance between local needs and global presence. We provide the local institution with brand recognition for their patrons and the ability to link to their branded pages from anywhere on the net. On a global scale, the scheme we are using allows internet search engines and ranking algorithms to recognize substantially the same content across multiple sites by using prefixes on a common root. This results in every reference by a local like UW increasing the ranking for the whole... thereby increasing libraries presence on the web.

Mike Teets
VP, Global Engineering, OCLC