Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Another awesome library-related web tool (the first I mentioned was “LibraryElf”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/01/16/library-elf/) is the “bookmarklet(Google for term to define)”:http://www.google.com/search?q=bookmarklet creation tool over at “Jon Udell’s LibraryLookup”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html page. If you live in Indianapolis, Indiana (or in the county of Marion in Indiana), you can use his customize tool to “build your own bookmarklet”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookupGenerator.html that lets you, when browsing Amazon.com or another similar web merchant, click this bookmarklet in your toolbar to open a search for that book at your local library! Easy way to save money buying a book that’s at your library!

This is very cool. If you go to the “Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library(IMCPL)”:http://www.imcpl.org/ you can just drag this link to your bookmarks/favorites/links bar, go to a page at Amazon (see “my LibraryElf post”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/01/16/library-elf/ for some Amazon links), and click the bookmarklet to try it yourself! It seems that IMCPL returns the identical match in a list of search results, but it seems the exact ISBN match is the third item down, so click the third ISBN down in the results to see the actual book information.

Note that if you use his “custom bookmarklet generator”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookupGenerator.html (which I did to create the link above) the values for IMCPL are:

Base URL: http: //catalog.imcpl.org/
Library Name: [whatever you want to call the link]
Vendor: "iPac" is the one you must select

(note: remove the space between the “http” and the “catalog.imcpl.org” above, I had to add it to get it to show up correctly in this post)

I provide this information because it was very hard to figure out that “iPac” was the correct vendor type, since it doesn’t mention that specific vendor anywhere on IMCPL’s site. Try it, you’ll like it!

In news important enough to deserve its own entry, I found a great new little resource over at “LibraryElf“:http://www.libraryelf.com/ that I found through a great little “post at 43 Folders“:http://www.43folders.com/2005/01/lazyweb_library.html. It gives you an RSS feed, and emails, with notifications of books due at the local public library here in town (they added ours, in one day, at my request!) and several others around the country. Granted, the local library already has reminder emails. But this site will not just email you, but text message your cell phone and provide a nice little RSS feed you can stick in your newsreader to let you know when what’s due, or overdue. With customizable reminder times (library’s limited to three days prior to due date), and the ability to notify you when holds are ready to be picked up as well!

For those with big families of book-checker-outers, or those with accounts at multiple libraries that ‘Elf supports, you can add multiple cards to one account and it will track all of them for you on the same system. Makes tracking all your stuff that much easier, even if they don’t let you place holds or auto-renew the books online through their system at the moment.

I’m thinking maybe if they allowed you to place holds on books you find in the library’s catalog (wait, I know the library lets you do this already through their site, let me finish!), but add them to an “interest queue” (see the second comment at that 43 Folders post above, which links to “Netflix for books or ‘interest queues'”:http://www.sauria.com/blog/computers/open_source/osaf/chandler/1129) that monitors when I return books and puts the next book or two on hold for me automatically. That would give the library more books on its shelves (so I don’t have to check out 30 books on a topic because I don’t want to forget to get them, then renew them up to the 15-times max unless someone else requests them). And me a more manageable stack of books to read at once, while letting me get to my “wish list.” But ‘Elf doesn’t place holds yet, so it’s a dream for the moment. Enough from, me go check it out!

Unrelated: “this is cool”:http://www.lazyweb.org/.