Our Virtual Reference on the Web

Speaking of wikis, the Libraries new instant message (IM) reference service AskTULibrary is one of only a handful of libraries doing such listed on Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki.

Another place our virtual reference services are appearing on the web is in records for OpenWorldCat. This project comes out of the WorldCat database of library holdings (accessible from here). OpenWorldCat opens up the records in this database to discovery by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Searching for terms that match books will bring up results labeled "Find in a Library" that link to an OpenWorldCat record with information on libraries that hold the book in a specific region (based on zip code). When Temple University appears in these records the information link takes the reader to our Ask a Librarian page. Hopefully this will allow a few more Google searchers to discover their local library and its wealth of holdings.

To see an example go to this pre-made search and click on the first or second result.

--Derik A Badman