Using LibrariesAustralia
Jessamyn’s recent post over at librarian.net about the difficulties of finding local copies with OpenWorldCat prompted me to see if it is easier to locate items with what is effectively our national public catalgoue, LibrariesAustralia. LibrariesAustralia has been available to the public since mid-2005. The National Bibliographic Database is our true union catalogue, LibrariesAustralia is a friendlier interface to it (if I’m wrong, NLA staff could correct me here!).
Let’s compare a book that seems appropriate: “The Social Life of Information“. Searching for it on LibrariesAustralia, I find three editions listed, one which has 74 holdings. Holdings appear in a long list, with a mix of government, academic and public libraries. How will I know which one I can access? If I click on the name of the library it will tell me its location and access conditions. Most are: “Details of public access: Open to the public”. It is worth bearing in mind that these details come from a separate database, Australian Libraries Gateway which is usable by the public, but contains a lot of information about ILL rates and isn’t always aimed at non-librarians.
Still, for the most part, it is fairly easy to work out where I can go to get the book. Australia obviously has far fewer libraries than the US which makes the process of going through lists easier. I also tend to use LibrariesAustralia to look up hard-to-get academic books rather than wildly popular books like Harry Potter (which are actually hard to search for, try it). I also use to identify if there are alternate holdings for ILL for researchers and postgrads.
Trying the same search on WorldCat, then selecting a location, eg New York, I get many results but when I click them I end up being taken to that local library’s catalogue search rather than finding out where the library is and whether I can access the book there. There is an additional link to “Library Information”, but that is often a link to the library’s homepage rather than being a database in WorldCat.
I do find LibrariesAustralia easier to use to find local copies than WorldCat, but that may also be partially because I am familiar with the libraries that are in my area. Still, access information is readily available to save people from going to libraries where they don’t have access, which is always a good thing.
What do you use LibrariesAustralia for?
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