OCLC Worldcat contains detailed information on more than 53 million books, serials, tapes, videos, etc. held by thousands of libraries, essentially pointers to hard copy materials and where they can be found. Though OCLC was originally conceived to help libraries share cataloging information, it's also a very valuable research tool. Even Google thinks so! They plan to include 2 million Worldcat records in their search results in the near future.
In the March/April issue of Online Magazine, Peter Jasco discusses how to use Worldcat to answer the question "Which is the best book on __________________?" He suggests searching on a topic, then sorting search results by the number of libraries that hold each item, showing the most popular titles at the top of the list.
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