I have a copy of Catan, L., Dennison, C., & Coleman, J. (1996). Getting Through: Effective Communication in the Teenage Years. London: BT Forum laying on my desk. It has had an odyssey I'm sure. I found a reference to this study in an article by Crispin Thurlow. Of course I checked IUCAT, the unified Indiana University library catalog, and found no reference to a copy in the university holdings. So I put through an interlibrary loan request through IUPUC. In less then a week I received a response that the book was unavailable through the Big Ten Combined Center for Library Initiatives (CIC). The CIC (Big Ten) Combined Catalog includes the online catalogs of the current Big Ten Universities (Purdue is currently unavailable), the University of Chicago, and the Center for Research Libraries.

So I pulled up WorldCat; WorldCat is OCLC's Online Union Catalog. It is the world's most comprehensive bibliography, with more than 33 million bibliographic records from libraries around the world. Use WorldCat to do a comprehensive search of published material, to verify citations, or to identify other libraries that own an item. In WorldCat I found that there are only three copies of this book listed and all are in Britain: The British Library, University of Oxford, and University of Strathclyde.

So I put through an interlibrary loan request on main campus wondering if they could get a copy from Britain. And low and behold, a week passes and here it is. With a lovely note pasted inside the front cover "This book is the property of the British Library Document Supply Centre and is part of the national loan collection of the United Kingdom. Please treat it with care." Don't you know it. LOL I'm almost afraid to read it.

I often wish books could talk, if only because the human ear hears faster then the eye can read. But in this instance I wonder what story this book has to tell about it's travels worldwide. Might be very interesting

Posted by prolurkr at March 7, 2004 07:02 PM

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