Ever heard of a “bookmarklet” (or “favelet”)? No? Stick with me for a second. Bookmarklets perform some action with the current page instead of loading a new one. Example: validator favelets check to see if a page is correctly coded.

Too esoteric? There are also cool bookmarklets available for mere mortals. Jon Udell‘s LibraryLookup is one example. The scene: you’re perusing Amazon or BN and you happen upon a book of interest. You’d like to read it, but perhaps not to own it. No problem. From the seller’s book detail page, just click the bookmarklet and a window will pop up telling you if your local library has the title available. Simple.

For a demo, I picked, oh, the Rochester (Mn.) Public Library. Drag, don’t click, this link [ Rochester Lib Look-up ] to the “links” bar in IE or Phoenix. (You might get a warning, but it’s perfectly safe.) Then visit any Amazon book page (sample) and just click the new button. A window pops up, giving you availability information. Here’s one for ISU: Parks Lib. Look-up.

Notes:

• It works by looking for the ISBN, a 9-digit identifier composed solely of the numbers 0-9 (though the final is sometimes an ‘X’) in the URL, so any bookseller that uses the ISBN in the URL will work.
• Because it works by ISBN and not title, it’s best to search from a hardcover book, the type libraries are most likely to have.
• Some pop-up blockers (and Phoenix) will make this appear to fail. It can be fixed to open in the same window with a little JavaScript. E-mail me for details.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 23rd, 2002 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Geekery.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.