Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Finally! Twitter gets great (for libraries)

FYI - Polk Library is participating in a trial of WorldCat Local until the end of September 2010. Below is a fun way to try it out.
Exerpted from the WorldCat Blog:

"If you're a Twitter user, take a moment to play with a new tool we've developed called Ask4Stuff...
This trial service allows you to search WorldCat.org by sending a tweet. Just use the hashtag #ask4stuff followed by a few words as your search query and you will receive a tweet back with a PURL or a short URL to the results on WorldCat.org.

Here's an example tweet:
#Ask4Stuff lake erie shipwreck

And the reply:
@[username]We found something on lake erie shipwreck in #Ask4Stuff, get them at http://is.gd/daPWw

To tweet a search query, you just need to post a tweet using #ask4stuff followed by the words you would otherwise enter into the search box: #ask4stuff "search query".

You can limit your search to just titles if you use #ask4stuff ti:search query, such as:
#ask4stuff ti:where the wild things are

Or limit your search to just authors using #ask4stuff au:name query:
#ask4stuff au:daniel pink

For those readers who are patrons of a WorldCat Local library, you can search your local catalog using a hashtag and the URL prefix for your Local at WorldCat.org. For instance, the University of Washington's WorldCat Local URL is: http://uwashington.worldcat.org.  To search their catalog, you would use the following tweet format:
#ask4stuff #uwashington [search query]

Your reply would include a short URL that would direct you to the results page at http://uwashington.worldcat.org.

Take a look at this experiment on Twitter and post any comments you have about this service. Even if you're not a Twitter user, you can view the tweets and replies by searching Twitter using the #ask4stuff hashtag."