LibX Firefox extension
LibX is “a Firefox extension that provides direct access to your library’s resources.” A library can grab the source, customize it for its own use (URLs, catalogue, OpenURL resolvers, etc.) and then encourage its users to to install it. It looks like a handy utility, but once you’ve picked out the Firefox users from the population, and then the Firefox users who know how to install extensions, then the extension-installing Firefox users who care enough about their library use to try this out, you’re down to a pretty small bunch of people. On the other hand, if you’re reading this, you’re probably in that small group, and if you’re not, you should be. So try asking your library about it. Tell them I sent you.
I mention LibX because they use OCLC’s xISBN service. If you have the extension installed, then you can select an ISBN on a web page, right click, and open up a framed web page with a list of related ISBNs on the left and your library’s catalogue on the right. (The LibX web site has screenshots and screencasts of this in action.) If your library doesn’t have the book with the exact ISBN you selected, it may have a related one, that is, it may have another manifestation of the same work. This is handy, but in the future this sort of service will get better. It’s possible to take an ISBN, check it with xISBN, look up the result set in the catalogue, and show the user a list of matching available books. Users will be able to go directly from “Does my library have this book?” to “Here’s a list of all other manifestations of this work that are available to me right now” without having to install anything.
Or even think about the first question: remember that Seymour Lubetzky said The catalogue has to tell you more than what you ask for. It’d be nice to see a mention of a book (a title, an ISBN, a proper citation, anything, on a web page, in e-mail or instant messaging, whatever) and be instantly told whether I can get that exact manifestation or another manifestation of the same work, in any format. Say a friend of mine e-mails me and says she’s following up on A Dance to the Music of Time by reading the book author Anthony Powell said he would take to a desert island: Mikhail Lermontov‘s A Hero of Our Time. Somewhere on my screen opens a small, subtle display showing that I can download an English translation from the Gutenberg project, get English translations from Penguin Classics, Modern Library, or Knopf at my local library (arriving at my local branch in X days), or buy the Penguin Classics and Modern Library editions online for so much (arriving at my home in Y days). (It would only tell me about English translations because it knows I don’t read Russian.) Also, of course, I’d see reviews and links to biographical information about Lermontov, etc. Here the catalogue is not only telling me more than what I ask for, it’s telling me before I ask and without my using the catalogue. (And as you’d read this blog entry, relevant links to Dance and A Hero of Our Time would show up …)