Bookmarklets!
A recent screencast from Jon Udell blew my mind. In it he showed how he used Firefox, the Greasemonkey extension, and some JavaScript cribbed from his excellent LibraryLookup bookmarklets to customize the Amazon.com book listing interface. With all these element installed, he showed how a book listing at Amazon can include information about the availability of the book at his local library and a link to the book’s listing in the library catalog. It’s like embedding the library lookup feature in Amazon’s site. It’s truly amazing.
I’ve set upon myself to create a similar Greasemonkey script for the Seattle Public Library. So, while I bone up on JavaScript and flail about helplessly for a time, I’ve decided to update my Seattle Public Library LibraryLookup Bookmarklet which had become useless since the library upgraded its catalog at the end of February. Just drag and drop the link to your bookmarks toolbar. Then when you’re viewing a book listing at Amazon (or other site that includes ISBNs in the URL) you can click the bookmarklet and a new window will pop-up showing you the status of that book at the Seattle Public Library.
Here’s a complete menu of all my collected bookmarklets, some of which I made and others I found elsewhere. Drag and drop any and all just like the LibraryLookup bookmarklet above.
- King County Library Lookup
- 43 Things tags search
- Technorati tags search
- del.icio.us tags search
- Flickr tags search
- Metafilter tags search
- Upcoming tags search
- del.icio.us linkbacks from the inestimable Alan Taylor.
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