A few days ago, David Eaves posted an idea to his blog (actually, one of several ideas): wouldn’t it be great to have a Greasemonkey script that would let you find a book on Amazon, then see if it’s in at the Vancouver Public Library?
Essentially, the effect is to turn Amazon into the front-end browsing system for a public library. And in fact such scripts have already been written for other library systems, including Ottawa’s.
Fast forward less than 24 hours, and the rather clever Steve Tannock has the thing written and updated to version 1.4, based on the Ottawa script.
Not too shabby. Take it for a spin, and let Steve and David know what you think! (Requires Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension.)
Posted via web from robcottingham’s posterous
You don’t need GreaseMonkey or Firefox, Jon Udell had the same idea years ago and make a bookmarklet generator. Here is the bookmarklet for VPL. And here you can make your own:
Library Lookup
It’s easier than that, too.. I think.
I use Book Burro for this type of functionality now, bookstores, online book sites, and libraries – all there. It works with Firefox. Some development on it continues.
http://www.bookburro.org/
Best,
DrWeb