AMAZING RESEARCH TOOL (for finding books and more): If you haven’t tried Worldcat.org (NOT dot com), then prepare to be astounded, amazed, and thrilled – and not just you bibliophiles out there. It’s easy to say it’s just an Internet catalog, but it is so much, so very much more. I’ll give you an example:

Let’s say you need a book your local library doesn’t have – we’ll call this book, “Handbook of Forensic Psychology.” You have a couple of choices. You could start checking the web catalogs for all your local libraries or you could call your local librarians and ask them to check. OR, you could use Worldcat.ORG. So you go to Worldcat.ORG (I’ll keep repeating it :-), and type in the title. From the list that appears, click on the book with the title that is a match. Then, you type in your zip code. Prepare to be thrilled (librarians get excited about the strangest things) – a list of the libraries in your area that own the book pops up. [Insert a “Like Wow Man” here.] NOW you can get on the phone, which you should do first instead of getting in your car (you MAY however get on your bicycle), because the book might be checked out and you’ll waste a trip (one never wastes a bicycle trip, especially on a beautiful day, which is just about every day in the Pacific Northwest).

DOT ORG, Worldcat.ORG, Worldcat.org, worldcat.org (NOT dot com)