Classify is a new service from OCLC which returns class numbers (Dewey, LC, and National Library of Medicine) assigned to books in WorldCat. This could be a good way to use the “wisdom of the crowd” when you are not 100% sure where to group a particular book.

I noticed that the url had a “2″ at the end, so I removed it to see what would happen. It appears to be an earlier version of the service. I didn’t have any luck with the first few ISBNs I entered, but the example links work well.

Any other changes to the url bounce the user to the DeweyBrowser, which is a lookup service from a couple of years back. Although it also has a “2″ at the end of the url, nothing happens when one changes it. So much for rewarding curiosity

Classify found via Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog

isbndb.com is one of several websites that allow you to search for books by isbn, as well as the usual title/author/keyword searching. 

Give it a try:  grab a nearby book (if you are like me, there are quite a few nearby, aren’t there?) and run a few searches.  What you can get is a summary of the book’s content, links to online retailers, and even a general Dewey and LC classification.  No MARC records, unfortunately….

I have used ISBN.nu for several years, and one thing it offers that this new site doesn’t seem to is links to other versions of the book.  I am likely to use both of these sites when searching for book information in the future.

from Karen Coyle, via the OpenLibrary listserv