I have used Worldcat to look up items here at the branch. My biggest beef with it is that although it looks like a union catalog, it is not necessarily comprehensive. There has been commentary on the blogosphere about Worldcat and its advantages and drawbacks. This post from Jessamyn is a good place to get the gist of some of it. Basically, it SEEMS authoritative. It seems to say that if it's not listed here, you will have to buy it (and here's the link to Amazon to do so - does anyone besides me have a problem with that? Why not encourage Interlibrary Loan? Is this ultimately discouraging the use of public libraries by saying "go buy it"? OCLC is a company after all, right? It's not a library, and it does not operate as a library.) But what Jessamyn is saying is that a lot of smaller and/or rural libararies may not have their holdings listed there.
AND I often wonder how current the information in Worldcat is. If anyone can point me to the place where I can find this out, please let me know.
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