Since I haven't been doing much hands-on work for some time, hacking is not very straightforward to me. Therefore when I decided to have a look at what I can do with Jon Udell's script for searching books to make it work with my local library's catalogue, I wasn't very hopeful. However, it looks that holidays added to my patience and in the end I have figured it out.

The result is my bookmarklet for Camden Libraries Catalogue.

Camden is not the only borough using the TalisWeb software. Google shows that some thousand other libraries are using it and as far as I can say they have the same URL syntax. Generalised HTML for the Talis LibraryLookup bookmarklet is as follows.

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('YOURBASEURL'+'YOURPATH?input='+isbn+'&execute=number-search&NUMBER_PROMPT_NAME=input&coll_name=Main+Catalogue','LibraryLookup',
'scrollbars=1,resizable=1,width=575,height=500'))}

In my case YOURBASEURL is http://cindex.camden.gov.uk:8001 and YOURPATH is /www-bin/www_cam32.

[UPDATE 8/1] Small fixes to make the bookmarklet actually work.

8:06:30 PM    

After a year of blogging (actually a bit more, but I lost my archives when moving from Radio 7) I have decided that Security Weblog is bit too generic and that some innovation in the name of this weblog will not do much harm.

8:00:35 PM