OCLC has put together an interesting prototype of a map for looking up facts on international library holdings and more:
“The OCLC WorldMap allows users to select countries of interest, then to compare various library and cultural heritage data by country.
WorldMap will generate interactive graphs that compare several different kinds of data for up to four countries at a time.”
I played around with the map a little. Very handy, and invaluable for people who prefer visual aids, although comparing countries of different sizes becomes very difficult without per capita figures. A limitation to some users is that the map was designed to run on a 1024×768 screen (or higher) and requires Adobe Flash Player 9.
[...] This is the sort of thing that needs a good example – and thanks to Level 1 Librarian’s post OCLC maps the world, I found my way to the amazing OCLC WorldMap project. The WorldMap itself is a Flash based [...]