In the past, I put together a Cincinnati Public Library Bookmarklet checks the availability of the current book that you are browsing at Amazon.com (much continued praised to Jon Udell for coming up with the idea). Now that Greasemonkey 0.5.1 has been released with its security flaws fixed, it is time to release my Greasemonkey version of this feature. Its far better than the bookmarklet version, since this code always run and you don't have to remember to use the bookmarklet.
Here it is cincinnatilibrarylookup.user.js.
As you can see from the image, it adds a link below the title that says if the book is in the library or not. Clicking the link will bring up the Cincinnati Public Library Online. Catalog. Enjoy and let me know what you think.
Also: For a short intro to the Monkey, check out my first user script. For a longer and better introduction, check out Dive into Greasemonkey.
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Comments (8)
When you say "available", does it actually check the status of the book too (available, checked out, missing, etc...)? Or does it just check to see whether or not the library has a copy of the book at all?
# Posted by Will | August 29, 2005 12:30 PM
By available I mean that the library owns one copy. It was tricky to do more than that to begin with since the online catalog for the Cincinnati Public Library is for over 40 branches. I hope to add more details in later versions and you of courses can click on the link directly to see the actual status. Plus intra-library loan is pretty good here so its not that bad if you have to go that route.
# Posted by Mark Mascolino | August 29, 2005 2:10 PM
Found your site through Paolo Massa's Blog. Meet him at AAAI 2005 (ai conference). I see you are up in cinci, I'm in lex. Cool script...
# Posted by Jesse Andrews | August 31, 2005 6:14 AM
Will:
I like the idea of checking the Cincinnati library for books before buying them, but I cannot seem to get this script to work. Any ideas? The Sibsy Cline script does work, and for that I'm very thankful. We just moved to Cincinnati and we'll be looking for a house soon. I also hate the maps the realtors link to use. Thanks.
# Posted by Scott Conley | October 27, 2006 8:57 PM
Scott,
Yeah I have noticed that the script has stopped working. Amazon must have changed their page layout. It's been on my todo list to fix. I'll let you know when I come up with something.
mark
# Posted by Mark Mascolino![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://people.etango.com/~markm/nav-commenters.gif)
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October 27, 2006 11:30 PM
updated script should fix the problem now.
# Posted by Mark Mascolino![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://people.etango.com/~markm/nav-commenters.gif)
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October 28, 2006 2:42 AM
Darn, for some reason the script isn't working - any ideas?
# Posted by Marg | June 6, 2007 9:43 PM
Marg...see here:
http://people.etango.com/~markm/archives/2007/06/07/cincinnati_public_library_amazon_greasemonkey_script_version_03_released.html
It's fixed now.
# Posted by Mark Mascolino | June 7, 2007 11:51 PM