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As always, Ed Vielmetti is thinking about how to make the library’s data work harder for him, with or without the library’s help. (Of course, Ed’s library is the phenomenal Ann Arbor District Library, which already offers more web-based services than most other libraries, but the simple openness of their systems makes it easy for a superpatron like Ed to extend these services even further on his own.)

So when Ed couldn’t find some overdue library books in the house, he started wondering aloud how the library services could help him out. Now we just need to think like Ed, too.

Now Where Did I Put that Book?

“All of the library books I have are tagged with RFID chips, which is used for inventory control. That should mean that I can use something like this 3M RFID locator device as a reader and scanner to locate a lost item.”

Wall of Books Revisited: Just What Do I Have Checked Out?

“No, I still haven’t found my overdue books, but at least now I know what they look like.

The AADL prints a helpful list of the books you have checked out, but doesn’t give you pictures of them (not yet at least). So I’m working on the Greasemonkey script that will insert cover images into that page. This is not that, but a step along the way.”

What I’m really waiting for, though, is Ed’s Greasemonkey script that adds “text me the location of this item” to a library catalog viewed in Firefox. I don’t think I’ll be able to use it for my home library’s catalog, but I’ll hold out hope it can be adapted.

Text Me the Location of this Book - Step One of a Greasemonkey Plugin for the AADL

“At the time I noted “how hard could it be to add this to my own library with Greasemonkey” or some similar off the cuff remark (oh how foolish I can be some times). So let’s pick that apart and see how I’d do this at the AADL.”