Search the HoCo Library from an Amazon page

How many times have you been browsing Amazon, found an interesting book, and wondered whether you could just borrow it from the library?

Here’s a “bookmarklet” for looking up books in the library catalog: Howard County, MD Library. Drag it to your link toolbar (not favorites! it doesn’t work there).

How this works:

  1. Search Amazon for a book of interest: note the big long hairy URL includes the ISBN number, which is a unique identifier
  2. Click on the link on your tool bar, which runs a Javascript program
  3. This parses the ISBN number out of Amazon’s URL, constructs an appropriate URL for HoCo’s IPac library catalog service, and submits it
  4. If the book is there, you’ll see the catalog display: otherwise you’ll see something like “sorry, there are no matches”

This is the brainchild of Jon Udell’s LibraryLookup project, a specific instance of turning URL’s into APIs. Check these tips if it doesn’t seem to be working.