Greasemonkey User Scripts for the UT Libraries Angela Kille INF385T Semantic Web May 1, 2006
Overview Project background Greasemonkey Amazon and Google Books user scripts Demonstration Development issues Future development
Background Mashup Go where the user is … Google and Amazon! LibraryLookup project – bookmarklet
Greasemonkey http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org Extension for Firefox web browser Allows you to change the behavior of web pages with user scripts (JavaScript files)
The User Scripts Two user scripts Scripts are almost identical Amazon UT Libraries Linky Google Books UT Libraries Linky Scripts are almost identical
Features Common features: Amazon script Does an ISBN search Identifies whether the UT Libraries owns a book “This book is in the UT Libraries!” “ISBN not found in the UT Libraries” Creates direct link to the library catalog Book icon Amazon script Has additional link to do an author keyword search in the library catalog
Demonstration www.ischool.utexas.edu/~akille/utlibraries
Development Issues UT Libraries catalog does not provide any textual indication of availability Could not implement various catalog statements because of this, for example: “Checked out due 06/01/06” “On order” “No longer available”
Future development Amazon script Google script Creating a title search link that won’t search anything in parentheses xISBN version of script Google script Adding author search link
Resources User scripts I built upon: www.superpatron.com – Google Books AADL Linky and Amazon AADL Linky from Edward Vielmetti’s site www.ischool.utexas.edu/~donturn/ut-amazon.html – Previous Amazon/UT Libraries script Other library-related user scripts www.userscripts.org/tag/library Jon Udell’s LibraryLookup Project weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html Jon Udell’s xISBN user script weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/01/30.html OCLC’s xISBN project www.oclc.org/research/projects/xisbn
Questions?