April 06, 2006
OU Library Amazon Greasemonkey Script
Earlier today, Paul Miller from Talis gave an 'Intro to Library 2.0' talk in the Library (blogged in part by Marc during the talk; I have some notes, too, that I will pop up later).
During the talk, Paul mentioned the use of Greasemonkey scripts for inserting library catalogue info into Amazon web pages (like this or this. I thought I'd posted an OU version of this script, but apparently not. (I do have a library lookup button on my OU Library Firefox toolbar though, which does something similar, albeit it ina more clunky way (i.e. a way that requires a postive user action, specifically clicking the Library lookup button).
Anyway - the Greasemonkey script hinted at above is easy enough to hack around, so here's a first pass (I'm not sure it's fully debugged yet, e.g. for books being catalogued or on order): Amazon UK OU Library Linky. (To use it, you'll need Greasemonkey installed on Firefox).
Here are few examples of what it does:
A book that can be found in the OU library:
A book that can be found in several versions in the library (e.g. on the shelf and inelectronic format):
A book that is currently on loan from the library:
A book available in electronic format in the library (I guess we could link directly to the ezproxied version here?):
Not found in the OU library:
In fact, this book is in the library under a different ISBN - maybe worth using xISBN (I think Dave Pattern at Huddersfield has done this? or perhaps it was
PS If you prefer, here is an OU branded script:
