Wednesday, 16 April, 2003

My Library look-up, isn't I've been trying off and on for the past several weeks to get a Jon Udell inspired library look-up bookmarkletto work. A bookmarklet is a little slice of java script that functions and can used as a browser bookmark or toolbar button. Udell's library look-up will extract an isbn from an URL - such as you would have in a results page from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com etc. - and redirect it as a search request to your library. Provided that your library uses one of about a half dozen recent generation online catalog venders, and it's on one of his lists or you get good results from his bookmarklet generator. The system my library uses: our recently purchased mighty Aleph 500 from Ex Libris is not on Jons list. Someone had written in to say they had put together a script that would work with their Ex libris system, and it does. Unfortunately U.Cal Santa Barbara is over in California and I'm here in Maryland. Our Aleph system supports 16 separate institutions and doesn't seem to do number searches from the basic search page (the default url) but from a form on a subsequent "advanced page", I'm not having any luck so far. I've tweaked this a couple of dozen different ways. This is the current version: javascript:var re=/[/-](d{9,9}[dX])|isbn=(d{9,9}[dX])/i; if(re.test(location.href)==true){var isbn=RegExp.$1;if(isbn.length==0){isbn=RegExp.$2};void(win=window.open('http://catalog.umd.edu/search=advanced&base=cp'+'func=find-c&ccl_term=020%3D'+isbn))} Eventually I'll hit the right combination, even if only by accident. 11:18:19 PM    comment [];

© Copyright 2003 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 5/04/03; 01:21:00.