Gallagher's WorldCat Local

This morning, we launched a new catalog service, WorldCat Local. This is in addition to our old catalog:

You might be familiar with WorldCat Local from the University Libraries, but ours is a little different.

The UW's version ranks material in this order: things held by the University Libraries; things held by Summit libraries (including Gallagher Law Library); things held by libraries anywhere else. Gallagher's version ranks material in this order: things held by Gallagher; things held by Summit libraries (including the University Libraries); things held by 25 top law libraries; things held anywhere else. You can also choose to search which subset of the database to search.

If you search our old catalog, you retrieve just the books, journals, and other materials we have cataloged. For instance, if you look for "war on terror," you get forty-nine records:


In WorldCat Local, the display looks like this:

And you get over 6,000 records -- quite a bit different, eh?

It's not just books. WorldCat Local includes some article citations, from a few databases. You probably aren't familiar with them (I wasn't), but the two biggies are Article First and British Library Serials. So the same search that got us books also gets us articles:


If you're coming by the library, take a look at the new displays about WorldCat and Summit near the entrance. And watch the Crier and the blog for more information. In the meantime, get in the driver's seat and take WorldCat Local for a little spin.