Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Not a question, a tell. According to Worldcat.org, Jacob Wonderbar is currently held by 214 libraries in the U.S. It's taking off in more ways than one.

Nice! Thanks for the news, I hadn't thought that was trackable.

Nathan Bransford wrote:Nice! Thanks for the news, I hadn't thought that was trackable.

Worldcat is a global phenomenon for tracking holdings in most English language libraries and interlibrary loan availability. 1.5 billion items at thousands of libraries at the present time. The public libraries in my region are letting their proprietary catalog servers go and relying on Worldcat to track their holdings and circulations. One library I know of saved $20,000 on technology and labor costs last year and avoided a hardware and software upgrade expense by moving their patron catalog access to Worldcat. Also, saves the library staff time by automating patrons' interlibrary loan requests. No longer do patrons have to go to the library and request an interlibrary loan book or other publication.

Shakespeare's works, of course, are at the top of library holdings according to Worldcat. Rowling's are at a distant remove from even Hemingway and Faulkner. Worldcat's not a revenue metric by any means. It does suggest there's trackable title longevity, or not, in the cultural popularity sense.