"Cookbook Finder is an experimental, works-based application that provides access to thousands of cookbooks and other works about food and nutrition described in library records. You can search by person, place, topic, course, ingredient, method, Dewey and more." Cookbook Finder was developed by OCLC Research.
Although Dewey has always been part of Cookbook Finder, it has now become visible, with assignable numbers from DDC 23 (including built numbers) appearing with captions in detailed-record displays. To search by Dewey number, click the class number in the detailed record.
Detailed records in Cookbook Finder are long, but here is the beginning of a detailed record, showing the Dewey number:
If you find a work that you want, you can click the cover art (or the cover art place holder) in the detailed record to go to the record in WorldCat.org to find the work in a library.
What is included in Cookbook Finder?
• Commercial, community, society cookbooks
• Culinary biography
• Literary cookbooks
• Popular and scholarly works on food and nutrition
What formats? Print, electronic, video, audio, etc.
With Cookbook Finder, you can type "biography" into the basic search box, and the first result will be My Life in France by Julia Child, followed by biographies of other cooks—very different from typing "biography" into the search box of WorldCat.org or a typical library OPAC!
Using Advanced Search in Cookbook Finder, you can type "desserts" in the Subject box and "Italy" in the Place box to retrieve 43 works, including Sweet Maria's Italian Desserts: Classic and Casual Recipes for Cookies, Cakes, Pastry, and Other Favorites; and Dolci Toscani: The Book of Tuscan Desserts. The detailed records display: 641.86 Desserts. A bibliographic record may have a more specific number—641.860945 or 641.8609455 (built with 641.86 Desserts plus T1—09 History, geographic treatment, biography plus T2—45 Italy or T2—455 Tuscany region)—but those built numbers are not found in the DDC 23 database (the database distributed in WebDewey). Only a number in the DDC 23 database will be displayed in Cookbook Finder, because the caption is needed to explain the number.
Among the "Related Works" listed with Sweet Maria's Italian Desserts is Sweet Maria's Italian Cookie Tray. The detailed record for that work displays 641.8654 Cookies. Among the next steps planned for the Cookbook Finder is provision of browsing based on Dewey hierarchy; that would provide another way to get from desserts to cookies.
Using Advanced Search, you can type "Italian cooking" into the Subject box to retrieve 3863 results, including Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. The detailed records display 641.5945 Cooking—Italy and 641.59455 Cooking--Tuscany (Italy). In these cases, the built numbers are in the database (641.59 Cooking characteristic of specific geographic environments, ethnic cooking plus T2—45 Italy or T2—455 Tuscany region).
If you click the DDC number 641.59455 in the detailed record for Heat, you get 142 results. If you are looking strictly for a cookbook, you can use the "Narrow Your Results" option at the left to limit a search to the genre "Cookbooks"; that leaves 7 results, excluding Heat but including The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from our Italian Kitchen.
Also in the DDC 23 database are these numbers and captions:
641.59451 Cooking--Northern Italy
641.59457 Cooking--Southern Italy
641.59458 Cooking--Sicily (Italy)
These represent another opportunity for future browsing based on Dewey hierarchy.
(Note: Information about Cookbook Finder was supplied by Diane Vizine-Goetz, Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Research.)
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