Friday, August 18, 2006

L2 script pretties up item records

Just stumbled upon the L2 script for Firefox. Once installed (note: Greasemonkey must first be installed), it opens a small box in the upper left corner of the item record display as long as there is an ISBN on the page. Clicking the plus sign in the box expands the window to reveal:
  • jacket art (via Amazon.com)
  • links to search LibraryThing and WorldCat for that item
  • links (with prices) to buy the book at Amazon.com et al.
  • editorial reviews from Amazon.com
  • customer reviews from Amazon.com
You can slide the box around on the screen, too. What a neat little tool. Too bad our OPAC at CUNY (Ex Libris Aleph) requires you to go to the MARC view to see the ISBN. That adds a clunky additional step for me. Still, I'm excited that now I can use BookBurro (which also has a WorldCat lookup) when on Amazon.com and L2 when I'm in an OPAC; mmm...what a tasty combination!

UPDATE: An hour after I published this, I found this post by Casey Bisson on the Talis Shared Innovation blog indicating that the L2 toolbar is his entry in the Talis Mashing Up the Library competition. I should have mentioned that I found the L2 toolbar in a really roundabout way. While reading the comments on the Thing-ology blog posted in response to Tim Spalding's entry on subject headings, I noticed a comment by Casey that offered a link not to his blog but to his Lib 2.0 website. Anyway, thanks Casey for the great tool!

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