LibraryTechtonics

Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, yes, I realize that I haven’t discovered something here. It’s been around a good long while, and it’s been reviewed by many a librarian, blogger, and librarian blogger. I just only discovered it, and I’m pleased to see it’s very existence.

In playing with the new toy, I’ve found that you must allow popups, since the OPAC record will appear in a new window. With the Windows XP SP2 updates as well as the Google toolbar both installed, it took a bit of juggling the settings of both at the same time to get it working (yeah, yeah, I know I don’t need both popup blockers on, I’m playing with some things). It means always allowing popups on Amazon, BN, etc., which isn’t such a happy thing, but it’s worth it for this feature. Alternately, I could play with the javascript and take out the popup bits, and have it target window.top or window.parent, or something like that, to have it appear in the same window.

The bit from the tips section on Jon’s site about searching hard covers is definitely true. That goes for special prints of things, such as items that are run specifically, say, for Oprah’s Book Club. Your library may or may not have that copy of an item, but if you look for a more “mainstream” print, you’ll probably have better luck.

This happy hack, with the latest development in creating a reminder feed for you library borrowings and the currently existing chapter a day-type services, would be a pretty nifty package of pull technologies from libraries for patrons. And, if packaged in a user-friendly fashion, a user contingent would develop outside of the general geek crowd. Talk about using tech to bring patrons to the library for books!

Tags: reading, technology