Finding Books from Amazon in Liverpool Libraries
Toxteth Library, which has just been fully refurbished, is a lovely building and only a few minutes walk from my flat. Each time I pass it I think that I really should make more (or even some) use of it.
I’ve had a couple of ideas of how that might happen, and last night found some time to have a play around with the Amazon API and the library catalogue. More on that as and when I get it finished, but my experiments reminded me of the Library Lookup service that Jon Udell pulled together years ago.
What the service does is provide a one-click way to find out if any book that you’re looking at on Amazon is available in your local library. Saving you the expense of buying it, whilst supporting your local amenities.
There seems to be a problem with one of the services that LibraryLookup depends on, so the initial lookup for Liverpool that I generated didn’t work. However, it wasn’t too tricky for me to work out how to fix things, and in case anyone else finds it useful, here’s the bookmarklet:
Drag it to your links bar, and you’ll be able to click on it whenever you’re looking at a book on Amazon and want to find out if it’s available locally. If you don’t follow what I mean by “bookmarklet” or “drag it to your links bar” then have a look at the Bookmarklets 101 screencast that Jon Udell also put together to explain it all.