I want to demonstrate the first steps in where I'm planning to go with building better ways for folks to point to books and gather information about books -- and ultimately other digital resources. I now have a little Python script running on this site that takes an ISBN (so far) and display pointers to a number of different "services": amazon.com, BookSense.com, the Library of Congress, my local public library -- the Berkeley Public Library, etc.
Let's use as an example, a book that I mentioned yesterday -- Iris Chang's The Chinese in America. In that blog entry, I already placed four separate links. I wanted to generalize that approach so that I could easily add more links and services. So...now if it you hit
you will get a popup window for the same book entry.
By centralizing things on one Python script, I will now be able to expand the functionality I will implement. I'll write in detail on my professional site of where we'll be heading. (Some ideas: dropping entries into Endnote, connecting to the Berkeley and University of California systems, deeper integration with amazon.com's wishlists, listmania, bridal registry, etc., making collections of books, etc.)
Credit is in order: Jon Udell's LibraryLookup project, Endnote functionality, Mark Pilgrim's pyAmazon library, David Williamson at the Library of Congress among others.