It's great that we have a collection of books online, but I can't really see people using this for pleasure reading. I have used it myself when I need an answer to a technical question. In this context, clicking through panes of text and viewing them in ugly font for a few paragraphs at a time is ok - if I find the answer, I don't care. But I couldn't imagine reading more than a page or two like this.
The other issue is the content itself. I got a lot of strange results - why should a book on resume writing result from a search on ASP.NET (a web programming language)? In the several searches I did on web technologies, there were only one or two books available from within the last 4 or 5 years (I wouldn't consider one older than that for tech purposes).
NetLibrary might be better if they decided on a strength and build on it.
I searched for The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters in WorldCat. It came up second in the results - not sure why. WorldCat guesses the Bayville zip code for my location - it has always done this - also not sure why. But OCL still comes up as the first library owning the title.
WorldCat has a clean, appealing interface. I think it's a much better interface for finding materials than most any traditional OPAC. I like the interactivity features, but I wonder if anyone uses them... I have never seen any user reviews on WorldCat. As a librarian, I see the usefulness of this tool, but I'm not sure the average library user would agree... it's yet another interface for them to learn. But I do hope that staff take advantage of this resource - it would definitely help fill out the request form.
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