Teach42

Major kudos to one of our school librarians, Fredrica, for pointing out this article from the Shifted Librarian that I totally missed somehow. Basically, Jon Udell came up with a very cool little bookmarklet for local libraries.

Let’s say you’re on Amazon.com and you have your eye on Life of Pi (the book I’m currently reading). You’re considering dropping the $10.50 to buy it, but then you think to yourself, “I wonder if my local library has a copy of it right now.” If your local library carries it, and actually has it on the shelf, you could just swing by the library and pick it up instead of paying for it and waiting 3-5 days for it to arrive. So instead of clicking, Add to Cart, instead you click on the bookmarklet Jon came up with and it grabs the ISBN number from the page you were looking at, takes you to your librarie’s website and pulls up the record for the book.

Now tell me the truth, isn’t that just the coolest little thing you ever heard of?

Amazingly enough, I even found the Berwyn Public Library there, so I just dragged the bookmarklet to my browser bar and tried it out. Guess what? Works like a charm! I did it for Life of Pi and found that it’s on the shelf in the Cicero library, right around the corner from where I life! Wow. What a fantastic tool. Check it out!

No comments yet.

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI