So I got a question tonight about Tom Clancy's new novel. A patron wanted to know if we have a copy of it - he even knew the title -- it's called Endwar. I couldn't find it in our local catalogs so I quickly looked on Amazon.com to see if it's even out yet. It's not - Feb 2008. And it's some sort of read-along with an XBox videogame or something.
So how would we have answered this kind of question 10 years ago? Look it up in Books in Print and hope we subscribe to the updates?? Hope the right update has been filed? What's more, it's not even a traditional Tom Clancy novel. I'm not even sure it's something in print. It might be a CD for all I know. But I had the answer in less than 10 seconds.
Seriously, How would we have answered this 10 years ago?
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Okay, how did we answer ANY book questions before Amazon, period. Seriously, I'm so thankful I became a librarian right around the time Amazon took off. They had such an incredible search engine, why didn't any library vendor copycat it. Of course now it's not as relevant now that they search sections of books as well as the normal areas. I get too much junk now. Before it was always dead on with what I needed.
Just love Amazon....and google!
We used to call publishers to find out about forthcoming titles. I still call publishers on occasion.
"Are there exam preparation guides for the CAT?" "Why, yes!" says the customer rep. I spoke to at McGraw-Hill.
Sometimes it's faster to call someone than to flail around on the web!
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