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Still awesome, still works: Request library books from Amazon pages

Submitted by Merlin on July 10, 2007 - 2:44am.

Jon Udell: The LibraryLookup Bookmarklet Generator

I covered this one back in the bronze age of 43 Folders, but I wanted to highlight the awesomeness again today for those who might not have seen it the first time around.

As described in September, 2004:

I still can’t get over how cool this is. Jon Udell’s little wizard [direct link] lets you generate a bookmarklet for requesting a library book—based on the Amazon page you’re currently viewing. It’s clearly a flawless lifehack.

You just need to know your library’s URL and which system your own city uses (which Jon makes simple by providing preview links to see which style your system seems to follow). San Francisco folks, use “http://sflib1.sfpl.org/” and leave the default system of “Innovative” selected.

At some point over the years, Jon’s bookmarklet fell out of my favorites bar (J’accuse, Amazon Prime). But today I was able to recreate my bookmarklet in about ten seconds, and now Bobos in Paradise is en route to the Parkside Library.

To modernize the tip just a bit, I’ll mention that this (and many other browser tasks involving entering passwords) gets so much easier with the amazing 1Passwd. In this case, you can tell the app to remember your library card number and PIN and autofill the library login page automagically.

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This generally works really well,...

Submitted by Chris the Librarian (not verified) on July 10, 2007 - 4:15am.

This generally works really well, but a comment: 1) The search generated is an ISBN search, which looks for a particular edition of the book. Which means if you’re looking at the hardback copy on Amazon and your library bought the paperback it’ll look like the library doesn’t have it. This frequently happens. 2) Once you’re in your local library’s catalog, a simple title search will usually resolve this problem