I routinely use three different public library systems (Los Gatos, San Jose, and Santa Clara County). Needless to say, searching all of them for a book is a real pain.

But today at lunch, a friend reminded me of Jon Udall’s “LibraryLookup” bookmarklet, which worked wonderfully, but still required three searches to check all three libraries. So I decided to extend the bookmarklet to do the work for me, and here’s the result:


javascript:var%20re=/([\/-]|is[bs]n=)(\d{7,9}[\dX])/i;if(re.test(location.href)==true){var%20isbn=RegExp.$2;void(win=window.open('http://146.74.92.11'+'/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term='+isbn,'Santa Clara','scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500'));void(win=window.open('http://64.204.128.44'+'/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term='+isbn,'Los Gatos','scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500'));void(win=window.open('http://mill1.sjlibrary.org/search/?searchtype=i&searchscope=1&searcharg='+isbn,'San Jose','scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500'));}


I’m sure there’s some easy optimization to get rid of all of the repetition in the JavaScript, but I’m lazy.

What I do wish I could do is have the bookmarklet open the results in tabs instead of popup windows, but I don’t think that’s possible without turning this into a Greasemonkey script or a real XUL plugin, and I’m lazy.

But if someone else has done it….

WorldCat would, of course, be a better solution, but it doesn’t seem to include the Los Gatos library (yet, anyway).