Comments on: find in a library?

By: Inserting St. Louis library holdings information into Google Book Search at ochsenhirt.com

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 23:14:06 +0000

[...] You’ll need Firefox and Greasemonkey to make it work. For credits, I’ll just quote the Superpatron: Thanks Jessamyn West and Kevin Yezbick for the ideas, and to Gordon Mohr for Javascript help. Jon Udell gets credit for the original script. I used the Joe Hewitt’s Firebug debugger to figure out what was going wrong with my first couple of tries, and Gordon’s Regex Powertoy got me started. Google, Google Book Search, Greasemonkey, library, librarylookup, MLC, St. Louis [...]

By: Edward Vielmetti

Edward Vielmetti — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 04:56:13 +0000

For what it’s worth – Google blogged about this today:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/real-find.html

noting the Greasemonkey script and saying in essence “we’re working on it”.

By: yezbick

yezbick — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 23:46:04 +0000

I think useful depends on the user. For someone unwilling to travel to another library — it’s extremely useful. For someone foaming at the mouth to find an item — perhaps not so much.

If beggars could be choosers, and those choosers were the users — I wouldn’t mind having that same option for libraries within a 15 mile radius of me – or the 5 closest. But that’s reaching for the stars, isn’t it? I would imagine with a bit of hackery you could plop in all of your favorite libraries though?

One of the main reasons I enjoy FirstSearch/Worldcat is because it arranges my libraries for me by distance…If my library doesn’t have it – I’m willing to hoof it up the road to another one that does. Knowing that my library DOESN’T have it is a huge letdown. Knowing that a nearby library can provide it is a huge relief.

By: Edward Vielmetti

Edward Vielmetti — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:37:19 +0000

Karen, my script is a lot more useful than the generic “find in a library” link, because it tells you right up front whether my library has that book in stock.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 16:57:54 +0000

The larger question, which I posed on FRL a couple of months ago, is why participating libraries didn’t insist on library links (for ALL items, whether or not they are contributed by libraries), given that they surely had some bargaining power going into this agreement.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 14:17:51 +0000

thanks superpatron, you’ve saved the day again!

By: Edward Vielmetti

Edward Vielmetti — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 06:18:48 +0000

Jessamyn, you should be able to adapt the Amazon LibraryLookup script from Jon Udell and insert something into the Google Books page about the library. It will take a little mangling of the links with Greasemonkey, but I don’t see any reason it couldn’t be done (the data is all there that you would need).

Let me write up a note to self on it for superpatron and see if I can’t get it worked out.

By: yezbick

yezbick — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 04:28:48 +0000

It’s better than the response I got back in November —

Hello,

We appreciate your taking the time to offer us this feedback and encourage you to continue to let us know how we can improve Google Print. At the moment, we don’t have links to local libraries, and your suggestion has been added to our list of feature requests. As Google Print is still a young program, new features are under consideration and your feedback is very helpful.

Sincerely,

The Google Print Team

I’ve noticed that searching by ISBN works in Google Books — so I’m hoping someone strings together a Greasemonkey script like Udell’s Library Lookup, or Edward’s MovieDude…

I don’t have the hacks in me to pull it off…I think I’ve already shouted out to the lazy web — but just in case, here’s another public pleading…