LibraryTechtonics

Wow. The response to this was *overwhelming*. I posted the bookmarklet fun, then went out for the night, and I haven’t been able to log on again until this afternoon.

*Wow*.

The unanimous solution to the problem was that, even though we were using the sub code for the apostrophe in “I’m Feeling Lucky”, it still needed to be escaped with a \. I received so many emails with various iterations of the fix, but I’m going to post the original code with the fix here:

javascript:var%20re=/([\/-]|is[bs]n=)(\d{7,9}[\dX])/i;if(re.test(location.href)==true){var%20isbn=RegExp.$2;void(win=window.open(’http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I\’m+Feeling+Lucky&q=site:worldcatlibraries.org+’+isbn,’LibraryLookup’,’scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500′))}

So, as I understand it, if you take the link and drag it to your Links bar on your browser:

WorldCat-Google Lookup

it should work just spiffy. So very, very hot. Or you can pick up the one off Jessamyn’s blog, or Steven’s blog, or a bunch of other places, by now.

Some handy tools that readers emailed me in troubleshooting the problem included:

• Mozilla Firefox Javascript Console [Thanx to John Mignault]
• URL Encoding (or: ‘What are those “%20″ codes in URLs?’) [Thanx to Michael Sauers

And we got some blog action, at least from the people who emailed me.

See also:

• Worldcat/Google Bookmarklet created! (includes Michael Fagan's fix and version of the bookmarklet, which includes a version that opens in the *same* window, so cool) [Thanx to Steven Cohen]
• Multiple posts from Michael Sauers
• Search WorldCat via Google

The coolest part of all of this is the thought and collaboration process. Jessamyn and I tooled at it for a while, and released it to the ether. It was impressive to read about everyone’s problem solving processes in emails and in blog posts, and how accomplished they felt about it. Too cool.

Jessamyn IM’d me this morning with a tech question, and it turned into a wonderful hack session.

Jessamyn wanted to know if I knew how to edit the Jon Udell bookmarklet to hit WorldCat directly, without going through a library subscription. I figured it must be able to, since WorldCat has released around 2 million of it’s records for search by Yahoo! and Google.

We decided to try this through Google, and the first breakthrough was working out the actual Google query. Using the search string “ site:worldcatlibraries.org” gets you Google WorldCat search results. Pop that in a Google search query URL, and, using the ISBN for Revolting Librarians Redux as an example, you get this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=1574411543+site%3Aworldcatlibraries.org

But how do we skip this extra step, and get straight to WorldCat without the Google results? Jessamyn figured out that it was the “I Feel Lucky” feature that does it for you. So we reformatted the URL to this, continuing with the Revolting Librarians Redux example above:

http://www.google.com/search?q=1574411543+site%3Aworldcatlibraries.org&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky

The only thing left was making the bookmarklet work with WorldCat. I didn’t think it would be difficult, since the scrape for the ISBN in the javascript would stay the same, only the URL for the OPAC, in this case our WorldCat/Google URL, would change. Fuss as we might, we couldn’t get it to lookup a book from Amazon. I thought that maybe it was having a problem with the “isbn” variable in the middle of the URL call, so we toyed with the URL until it brought us to the correct WorldCat record with the ISBN at the end, and popped the variable in at the end, since the other bookmarklet URLs had the “isbn” variable at the end. We ended up with:

javascript:var%20re=/([\/-]|is[bs]n=)(\d{7,9}[\dX])/i;if(re.test(location.href)==true){var%20isbn=RegExp.$2;void(win=window.open(’http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=site:worldcatlibraries.org+’+isbn,’LibraryLookup’,’scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500′))}

My current theory is that the script doesn’t like the “+” inside the URL single quote, as opposed to the “+” as the connector (see bolded bit above). But that’s just a theory. I tried an “&” in its place, but the URL wouldn’t work that way.

Jessamyn, having more librarian street cred than myself ;), is sending an email to Jon Udell to see if he can tell us where we went wrong.

Even if someone else has figured this out, the thought and collaboration process on this was *awesome*. And if nothing else, people can use this information to create their own WorldCat search links to web sites and blog posts, using the ISBN, title, or author. Hopefully we’ll get that bookmarklet working with some help. If you’ve got any tips, send me email and let me know.

I was just IMing with Jessamyn about this yesterday. I was trying to figure out a way to create a scrape feed of the MLIN Job Listings page. The way that the listings are set up, it’s difficult to figure out what the URL of the content in the frame that actually contains the listings, and it’s impossible to link to individual listings.

With the email I was writing to them about it sitting in my Drafts folder, MLIN has revealed their new RSS feed for their job listings. No more trying to hack a feed, no more using URL change notifier emails to try to keep track. There’s even a little description of what the feed is, and how to read it. Brilliant.
Now if they could just work on the interface a bit, and get it out of the frameset, it’d be one step closer to perfect.

I have both a Hotmail and a Yahoo! account, which I signed up for mostly because of instant messaging, but with your account you get a slew of features, including email, a personal portal, and whatever else they hand you for free (which, on occassion, includes standard spam).

Anyway, I like my personalized portals. I get a sense of what mainstream free services are offering their users, which reflects what mainstream users are accustomed to, which helps me look at other portal technologies from a more user-oriented perspective, keeping my inner geek in check. And the news and features offerings aren’t too shabby, either. I found this little nifty on my MSN home page:

Ideas Happen
What’s a $25,000 idea?
You tell us.
Ideas Happen is a forum for pitching and funding great ideas. Last year, 12 people won $25,000 each to make their idea a reality. This year, it could be your turn.

The only real rule is that you need to be 18-29 years old by August 16, 2004, and that you pitch only one idea in one of three categories: entrepreneur, self-expression, or community. Since there are tons of young, new librarians out there, looking for a way to break in and make a difference, this might be a good shot. As for the 30+ librarians, convince your younger counterparts to do this.

Want to start a technology training corps for librarians? Or maybe a reading program? Or possibly get money for professional development to make yourself more qualified to start a new program or deal with the issues in your library? Pitch ‘em the idea. You might get free money for it. The pitch deadline is October 20, 2004. After that, let the world know about your pitch, so’s that we can all go and vote for it.

You can pitch your own personal idea that has nothing to do with libraries or librarians (natch), but imagine getting a major credit card company to pay for your well-thought, well-deserved library or librarian improvement idea.

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!