What is a word cloud?
Sounds like the dream one has after an all night read.
Actually, the word cloud is part of our Visual Catalog. The Visual Catalog helps you think of the best search term for the item you are trying to find in the library.
Try it out at our library’s website at www.chililibrary.org by selecting ‘Visual Catalog”
When the Visual Catalog appears enter any word and you will see an explosion of related words surround it. I typed in the word ‘Bear’ and the words Grizzly, Berenstain, Teddy, and Paddington appeared. By selecting the word Teddy my search was further refined and I decided on the book The First Teddy Bear by Helen Kay. The book is a history of the stuffed toy. What I like about the word cloud is that it brings back the browse-ability we used to get with the traditional card catalogs. Give it a try.
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Try the search word 'mercury'. Two word associations that appear in the word cloud are 'automobile', and 'planet'. By then selecting 'planet' the search retrieves 5000 items about the planet Mercury. You can then refine the search to format, author, subject, or language.
The Rochester Museum and Science Center also uses a visual catalog to search the entire holdings of the RMSC's libraries and archives at http://libcatAt
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