etc.

I’ve been working on a presentation I’m giving to the librarians at my institution at the end of the month as part of a brown-bag lunch series. I gave one last year on using various Web tricks and tools to help you do your job faster, easier, with less ado. Like most librarians I know, I do ridiculous amounts of Web noodling and collecting so when the brown-bag organisers asked me to give the same session again this term, I snuck in a few brand new tools I’ve found and grown dependant upon since I gave the session last year.

Last year I introduced the group to bookmarklets and they loved them. That you could search google, lookup a definition, and change the appearance of a Webpage with the simple click of a button, no typing at all, well that understandably floored most of them. This time, the jaw-dropper will most definitely be John Udell’s Library Lookup. This genius bit of code searches your local library’s holdings with, you guessed it, the simple click of a button, no typing at all. So if you’re looking up The King is Dead by Jim Lewis at amazon.com and you’re at the item page (where the ISBN appears in the URL), all you’d have to do is click on your lookup link and a pop-up window opens to your library’s catalogue, searches the ISBN, and gives you the holdings info. This is some sort of golden nugget of code and John Udell is some sort of golden god of javascript.

John has included lists of bookmarklets browsable by catalogue vendor and if your local library is not on any of the lists, you can build your own bookmarklet quite easily. For local readers, here’s the bookmarklet for the Toronto Public Library catalogue and here’s one for McMaster University. Drag the links to your links toolbar (clicking on them will do nothing) and you’re set to begin hassle-free book browsing.

Some days I don’t mind sounding like a cheap marketing campaign if the product is something I actually believe in.