New Release of Atalib
Version 1.21 of the Atalib user script accommodates changes to Amazon's page format. I'm not completely happy with the placement of the search results, and will be investigating ways to better integrate the results with the Amazon page.
Download Atalib 1.21.
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WorldCat Lookup From Amazon
Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that allows users (i.e., you and me) to run javascript programs of our choice, called user scripts, to change the look or behavior of web pages.
WorldCat is a service that lets you search the catalogs of libraries both nearby and around the world.
Amazon is, well, Amazon.
Atalib is a Greasemonkey script that runs on Amazon pages. It performs a search on WorldCat, and displays the result on the Amazon page, so you can see if the item is available from a library, near or far. WorldCat helpfully orders its results by distance, so you can easily determine whether the item you're interested in is available within biking distance, or if you will need to charter a jet.
To use Atalib:
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Get Firefox if you're not using it already.
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Install Greasemonkey. You'll have to restart Firefox after installing it.
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Look for one of these two ways of installing the script.
Whichever you see, click the
Install
button to install Atalib. - Rock the Library, 2.0-style.
It was fun to find out that a manual of Japanese etiquette is available through the Library of Congress, and that the library of the Nelson-Atkins Museum owns a copy of Introduction to the X Window System.
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Atalib Bugs Squashed
Atalib is a greasemonkey script that adds Worldcat search results to amazon pages.
This weekend, I discovered a few bugs that needed fixing.
- If the name of the library contained a nonalphanumeric
character, it would appear truncated in the atalib table; only the
part of the name that came after the nonalphanumeric character would
appear. For example, if the library's name was
Texas A&M Library
, it would be shown asM Library
. - If no distance data was provided for a library, the subsequent
distances would be shifted up to fill in the gap, and the last
library would be shown to have a distance of
undefined
. (I had no idea distances might not be provided for libraries!)
Both these bugs have been fixed in the newest version of the user script, which is available for download.
Details about the usage of atalib, and how to install it can be found on the original announcement.
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Atalib Fix
As I mentioned, I recently had to change Atalib to track changes to the search result page at WorldCat. The updated version is now available: atalib.user.js
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Atalib Update
The format of WorldCat search results pages has changed, and it broke Atalib. I've fixed the bug, but haven't worked out how to provide the updated source in my new, improved blogotube information architecture.
The corrected version should be available soon.
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