Wednesday, June 30, 2004

New Technology Toy!

I'm so tickled about this that I just can't stop grinning:

With one click and drag of the mouse, you can have a new tool, called a bookmarklet, that will allow you to check a library system for any book that you find on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com

The example below is for the University of Hawaii Library system, but this page lists several different library systems that bookmarklets are available for.

Bear with me now, because this is exciting!

From this page, click-and-drag the "USA - Hawaii - Honolulu - University of Hawaii at Manoa" link up to your browser's link toolbar. The links are listed alphabetically, so you have to go about halfway down the page.

Now, the next time you find a book on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com that looks interesting, but you aren't sure that you want to buy it, this tool will allow you to check if it's available in the library so you can preview it.

Say you are looking at the Amazon.com page for The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World. Just click on the bookmarklet on your toolbar, and a new window pops up that shows you the UH record for that title.

Increasing the coolness factor is that each subsequent check will re-use the same window.

I'm off to try to create one of these for the Hawaii State Library's iPac system...