Merlin over at 43folders pointed to John Udell’s venerable but still spiffy library lookup bookmarklet generator. I couldn’t figure out what values to use to make it work with the King County Library System catalog, but I was able to hack the code to make it work. Since most of my friends who use the library probably aren’t going to do that themselves, I’m sticking it here for them to grab.
What this does is if you’re looking at a book on Amazon or any other page that displays the book’s ISBN in a recognizable way, you click on the link I’m about to share and it will open a new window showing the search results for that ISBN in the KCLS catalog.
Drag this link: KCLS-it to the link bar in your browser. Then go look something up at Powell’s and once you’ve got the book you want showing, click the link in your link bar. It should open a new window (or tab) showing that book in the catalog. If the book isn’t in the system it will show you a list of items around that ISBN that are in the catalog.
Yell if you have problems and I’ll try to help you out.
OMG! That is so cool! I was just doing some research on books and then going to another window and putting holds on them on KCLS, then I remembered your post. You made it very easy. I just put holds on 4 or 5 books in a fraction of the time it would have taken before. Readers: It does work with Amazon, too–Jeff’s just doing his part to promote independent bookstore Powell’s, which is a very fine place, both as a physical store and an online store.