Firefox Extension: LibraryThingThing
Richard Wallis over at Talis has put together a Firefox extension called LibraryThingThing. In fact, it should have been called LibraryThingLibraryThing because it fancies up LibraryThing pages with library information, namely the number of libraries that have the book, drawing on the Talis Platform Holdings Lookup Service. If you click on the "Found in X Libraries" link, you get a list of those libraries, with links to their page.LibraryThingThing is a complex three-API Greasemonkey mashup, querying the Holding Lookup Service along with LibraryThing's thingISBN and OCLC's xISBN service. It makes my head spin a bit. Three cheers for Richard. Too bad he works for Talis, or he might have won the Mashing Up the Library Contest.
LibraryThingThing can be found at: http://www.talis.com/tdn/greasemonkey/librarythingthing
This is an exceedingly cool mashup, and a very good demonstration of all the components. To my mind, it would be more useful if it did less, telling you only if the book was in your library. Do you agree? How should LibraryThing tie into libraries. As always, your thoughts are much appreciated.
We were, actually, planning on doing something like this, and even started the code. When we bring something live it will be a lot less technically elegant—good old server-side programming—but also not browser- and extension-dependent.
In other news, Chris just came by to grab the ginormous server box. Abby took a picture of it, but her camera uses some arcane memory stick format, and she forgot the cable is too modern for Tim. We have photographic proof of a new server—really!
posted by Tim at 10:43 PM
17 Comments:
Hmm....Perhaps rather than having LTThing look up only a specific library, it would be helpful if it could look libraries within a preset distance of a zip code, similar to the way Open WorldCat works.
Jdarlack: There is always book burro. You would just need to hack it for your local libraries.
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Hello:
I just signed up with LTT and it took about twenty seconds to complete, after I read the instructions correctly.
Does anyone know how long it takes to start seeing the statistics from LTT?
Just wondering.
Jack
I installed LTT yesterday, and I agree that less is more in this case. I would only find it useful if it only brought up my two local library systems.
Argh. Some naana, or possibly the computer, has combined all the narnia books, plus sundry other Lewis books (like out of the silent planet) together. I thought we'd been bombed or the server had hiccuped when I saw the lion the withc and the wardrob jump to 8,000 copies. Is there an automatic way to separate these, because otherwise it will take forever.
Yes, ninny. I'll fix it.
As a future feature suggestion, maybe the combine/separate pages could work like wikipedia pages, where you can see the history and easily revert to a previous version?
total non-sequitur but I love this idea - http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october04/dushay/10dushay.html - I'm fascinated by spines - any chance?
Thanks for the kind comments Tim, I hope your head has stopped spinning now ;-}
I agree with your 'less is more' point and being able to choose which library, or group of libraries, to check the holdings of is on my To-Do list. The nice thing of distributing this mashup as a Firefox extension, is that users will be automatically notified of updates.
I am encouraged to see that you are going to some "good old server-side programming", and I'm sure it will be elegant! Obviously you will be able to use the same Talis Platform API Services that I did in my mashup to achieve the same functionality with very little effort.
With reference to other comments, many of the questions asked are answered in the FAQ's section of the LibraryThingThing page.
With particular reference to the Britishness of the results, the holdings freely contributed to the Talis Platform have historically been from a large number of United Kingdom and Irish libraries. The mix of contributing libraries will inevitable change over time, as discussed in a blog posting by my colleague Pall Miller here.
I installed the extension, restarted -- a few times, actually. The "Found in X Libraries" link doesn't show up in Firefox.
To clarify what is actually gong on within the LibraryThingThing Firefox extension.
The "Found in X Libraries" link will only show up if the particular ISBN, or one related to it by the xISBN and ThingISBN web services, is held within a library which has contributed its holdings to the Talis Platform.
To confirm your installation of LibraryThingThing is working, take a look at this book . It should display that it is found in 5 Libraries.
The "Find in a Library" Link is a link to OCLC's web site to allow you to search WorldCat member libraries which hold a copy of the book with the ISBN. This is a standard feature of the LibraryThing display which the LibraryThingThing extension has no influence upon.
Although, on the surface both these features deliver the same functionality there is a fundamental difference. LibraryThingThing only displays a link if it has useful information for you. "Find in a Library" is a speculative link which invites you to try and find holdings.
On a final technical point, LibraryThingThing only starts working once the whole web page has been displayed. So if there is a problem with page display [ like there is whilst I'm typing this - Tim, I hope the new server will bed in soon] it won't get called.
Richard,
Yes. The tentative change-over is tonight. Abby and I are banging on it.
Tim
the extension doesn't seem to be working at the moment or Talis is down? or does it need the Greasemonkey script as well as the Firefox extension for it to work? (although it also didn't work when I had the extension AND the Greasemonkey script installed) are there know conflicts with other extensions? next I will uninstall the extension and just try the script...
ok... the Greasemonkey script is not working by itself either...
mischievousmary, there appears to be a problem with OCLC's xISBN service, one of the web services that Richard's LibraryThingThing looks to for information about related ISBNs. Richard and Tim are both aware of the problem, and Richard is producing a workaround which you will all be able to use until OCLC's web service is repaired.
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