Search: worldwide virtual library catalogue

WorldCat call itself the world's largest network of library content and services. Linked to libraries that are committed to providing access to their resources on line, WorldCat.org enables searching of the collections of book repositories around the world:

* Search many libraries at once for an item and then locate it in a library nearby to borrow it
* Find books, music, and videos to check out
* Find research articles and digital items (like audiobooks) that can be directly viewed or downloaded
* Link to "Ask a Librarian" and other library services
* Post your review of an item, or contribute factual information about it

You may need to have an active offline membership with some libraries to view/download content or check out materials by downloading.

Illustration: Click on WorldCat icons to search for books, music CDs and videos -- all of the physical items you're used to getting from libraries. You can also discover many new kinds of digital content, such as downloadable audiobooks. You may also find article citations with links to their full text; authoritative research materials, such as documents and photos of local or historic significance; and digital versions of rare items that aren't physically available to the public. Resources are available in many languages.

Go. Read. WorldCat.Org

Smackdown?: James Joyce vs Ayn Rand

For a good laugh, check out The 100 Greatest Novels lists at Random House

(the experts' top 10:

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
   
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck

the people's top 10:

1. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
8. WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
9. MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
10. FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard

- and you wonder how George Bush became the leader of the Psychlos).

(Note that the presence of the amateurish To Kill a Mockingbird and the dated 1984 among the top 10 may be accounted for by the fact that for decades they were force-fed in high school, apparently the last time many people encountered anything that passably resembles literature.)

(Not that "the people" are afraid of big books: Mission Earth has got to be 4x the length of Ulysses.)

Speaking of Ulysses, it may be not only the greatest novel ever written (it is a masterpiece, though I'd plump for The Great Gatsby as near-perfect), but also the greatest dirty novel every written, so if you are allowed only one book on that desert island...

If you want to reread Ulysses, download it to your computer for free here (there's a hypertext version here). If you don't ever intend to read it, but you still want to pick up dates at Barnes & Noble, there's a quick overview of the book here and a really quick version (almost no words at all) here. Should you want to suffer the book in its entirety without actually reading it yourself, you can have it read to you here (it's only 32 hours long, perfect if you happen to be driving to Los Angeles, say, from Chicago).

Words: Digital Libraries

Here are some of the more prominent library research projects, open archives and book lists on the web:

Google Book Search: <http://books.google.com/>
Project Gutenberg: <http://promo.net/pg>
The UK Electronic Libraries Program (eLib): <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib>
The Environmental Electronic Library (UCBerkeley): <http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu>
The Alexandria Project (UCSB): <http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu>
Informedia (Carnegie Mellon): <http://www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu>
Federated Repositories of Scientific Literature (U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): <http://dli.grainger.uiuc.edu>
Intelligent Agents for Information Location (University of Michigan): <http://www.si.umich.edu/UMDL>
Internet Public Library (University of Michigan): <http://www.ipl.org/>
Bibliotheca Universalis: <http://www.bl.uk/gabriel/bibliotheca-universalis>
The Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania): <http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/>
Questia: <http://www.questia.com/Index.jsp>
Gateway to Library Catalogues (Library of Congress): <http://www.loc.gov/z3950/>

American Civ: The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

Minimum cultural knowledge: "The manifestation of one of the most influential modern educational theories, the 6,900 entries in this major new reference work form the touchstone of what it means to be not only just a literate American but an active citizen in our multicultural democracy...." -- from the website. <http://www.bartleby.com/59/>