WSU (Wayne State University) Googlebooks Greasemonkey Script

The googlebooks script I ran for the Farmington Community Library was turning out to be pretty pointless in that the FCL collection is miniscule in comparison with the amount of books available through Googlebooks. In comparison with the Wayne State University Libraries collection, there was an obvious solution to the pointlessness. The FCL script is still here: FCLgooglebooks — but I’ve disbled it in my own browser in favor of the newbie I’m working on…

When I told my friend and LIS classmate about my copycat efforts to link up the catalog of my library to both Amazon and Googlebooks — she was, like most people in the world, less than enthusiastic. She has become wary of Google’s movements of late – and has trouble even muttering their name…She did manage to ask if I could apply the scripts to the Wayne State University Libraries — and I’m glad to say that I can and have. So – these are for her.

WSU Google Books Script
WSU Amazon Lookup Script

What I really like, and what I really was having the most trouble with today concerning these scripts — is that they will now retrieve results for E-books as well. The screenshot I’ve posted shows what happens when the scope of the search returns both a physical book and a book that is available as an E-book in pdf format. If I limited that scope to just books — the E-book wouldn’t appear in a googlebooks search or amazon lookup. For a while I thought I’d be stuck just searching for books — but figured out how to hook in the [electronic resource] string in the script and clapped my hands and said yeah.

WSU’s catalog shows an "ebrary" of 2000 items thus far — but there are probably more out there. If you don’t care for the ebrary materials – as you don’t have access to them not being a student or whatnot — you can just change the part in the script that reads "var libraryUrlPatternTrailer = ‘&searchscope=1′;" to:
"var libraryUrlPatternTrailer = ‘&searchscope=2′;" and that will set your search scope to only browse the books…

I haven’t come across a book on hold yet — I’m digging through the catalog looking — but that aspect isn’t yet included in the script. If you find one — shoot me an email: kevin[at]yezbick.com – or leave a comment so’s I can plug it in – and shoot this script into a more public space.

Again — all credit is given in the script to Mr. Ed "Superpatron" Vielmetti, Jon Udell, Carrick Mundell, and Gordon Mohr — without all of whom I wouldn’tve been able to fill in this template.

Update: I’m now going to have to figure out how to adapt this script in light of This Script — which cycles through different collections and winds up in worldcat…I was wondering how to do this…Unfortunately it doesn’t check for the actual status…