In ordering computer books for the library I was looking forward to the arrival of Chris Seibold’s Big Book of Apple Hacks. I didn’t really find much in there to improve my MacBook – which I already love as is. I usually refer to the lifehacker website once a week for a steady diet of updates and funstuffz on the computer. I had not, however, come across goPod.

In an effort to stave off lawsuits for bleeding ears syndrome due to high volumes of iPods – Apple set the volume to 9. goPod sets it back to 11 – which is good for me when I want to blast it in my car or hook it up to the stereo. So here’s an arbitrary link to the goPod website – where downloading and installation is easy-peasy.

(Amazon affiliate links aren’t very wordpress friendly. Had to redraft this several times to stop it from blowing up the front page – wish there was some php amazon code.)

Couple snafus — can’t seem to get multiblog to put the entries in order on the main page and there is some trouble retrieving the xml files for the fancy new interfacy thingies…

update: figured out the new multiblog sort order – am in process of converting to new template tags

Lots of fussiness in those listservs…

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…

But — I’ve now adapted Ed’s adaptation of the moviedudescript for the Farmington Community Library: FCL Movie Dude. I’ve left the Ann Arbor link in there as a means to compare the two catalogs. That’s my own preference – as I’ll be writing a paper later which requires the comparison of two OPACs, and may settle on these two.

The FCLGooglebooks script is now available as well.

Grandma had asked for an explanation in english as to what I’ve been talking about. The best I can do for you Gma is to tell you that in order for any of this to make sense — you need to be running the Firefox browser with the Greasemonkey extension installed…

If you read through those pages — and follow the directions…You’ll probably be able to grasp the concept. If not — next time I see you — I’ll show you an example. Last but not least — for these scripts to be somewhat meaningful – you probably want to be a patron of the Farmington Community Library.

I’m gonna keep at this “Beginning Javascript” book — and try to hammer out these Regex’s for the holds variable — and until I do that – I’m gonna hold out on placing these up on the userscript site. Maybe I’ll come across one already working on a similar HIP catalog…until then — yada yada yada….

So I’ve scraped together the Amazon FCL Linky for Greasemonkey. Based off Edward Vielmetti’s Amazon AADL Linky which was based off of Udell’s Library Lookup. I’m not keen to the holds variable yet, and have to find a book on order and in processing…But there’s a Super Bowl to watch today — so I’ll get at that later. As of right now, it’ll tell you if Farmington Community Library has the book or not, if it’s checked out and when it’s due back.

I’ll also try to work up the Googlebooks script…But I’ve got me one of dem der cataloging tests this week — so I probably won’t get at any of this until the weekend.

Cheers.

Well, apparently – not only had they not considered it — but they’d never heard of it. (I’d read somewhere that only 6% of American’s knew what RSS was — but this was still a bit surprising…or perhaps I’d read that only 66% of blog readers knew what RSS was — now that I’ve searched…)

One concern that was raised was the ability of patrons to be able to download software – or the library to place software on the computers so that patrons could have a feedreader and use it…I explained that that would be difficult as each feedreader is personalized with particular feeds to that particular person — (now I’m realizing that I’d forgotten about the other web-based readers – Kinja and Bloglines — but oh well) — and that to have the software on the computer wouldn’t be helpful. Now I come home to this — Google Reader — upload my feeds — and playing around with it – am enamored.

Whilst explaining, or failing miserably at explaining RSS, I came across Dartmouth’s page explaining it much more clearly while providing some basic RSS feeds — a page that I used as an example of what we could possibly set up on our library home page. I also mentioned AADL and ran a query for “public libraries RSS” for further examples. Most of the librarians are headed to MLA (Michigan Library Association) next week — and I told them to keep their ears open for XML/RSS etc…so maybe some movement might happen here…who knows…

Update: My initial enthusiasm is waning slightly. My lappy may be slow – and definitely in want of an upgrade — but the response from Reader is dragging slightly. Given – it’s working under a burden of 267 feeds – but scrolling is an issue.

I’d also like to see a click and drag mechanism – similar to PDF files – so I can pull the entire screen down at once — REAL FAST LIKE!

Also — to be able to ctrl click several feeds at once – so that I can label multiple feeds…

I can be pretty demanding.

Unfortunately — I still haven’t been able to figure out why the dynamic publishing features of movabletype aren’t working…

I know about the openbase dir errors – and how that’s host side — but I can’t help but think I’ve misconfigured something somewheres…

I’ve sent my final tech support letter to the hosts…begging…pleading for a fix – like a blog junkie.

I’m afeared that if things don’t happen – I’ll have to go through the trouble of exporting the entries – backing up the database or whatever and redirecting the url to a different host…Not that I don’t like it here…It’s just…well…difficult right now…

So yeah — comments are still borked here — but pretty soon Micki will have pictures of my nephew on her site – and Mark will have resumed regular postings…

And still I feel unfulfilled…

Update: Josh and I chatted for a while and worked out the issues on the site…And let it be known that ANYtime I have had a problem with the site – Josh has been available. There were several major distractions over the past week [Katrina - to even label this horror as a "distraction" is foul] – but everything is hunkydory now…
Now to bandwidth…