We’ve been exploring a few possibilities of adding some ‘enhancements’ to our catalogue at the University of Winnipeg Library. Some options we’ve been looking into include adding book covers, table of contents, and reviews offered by Bowker’s Syndetic Solutions and we’ve also been examining Blackwell’s Table of Contents service. The pricing model of the two companies is quite different, Blackwell offers TOC’s for purchase, while Syndetic solutions offers a yearly subscription service. Syndetic solutions seems to be a good value and is used by a great many academic and public libraries such as McMaster University Libraries and Ann Arbor District Library. The question that has been on my mind since investigating some of these services is how can we do some of the same things without paying them…
Well, things have been looking up as of late with Google’s announcement posted on their “Inside Google Books Blog” of the new Google Book Search Book Viewability API (GBS API). Since the release in mid-March of this new API a number of libraries have since experimented with adding book covers and book previews (in some cases full-text where copyright permissions exist or those that fall out of copyright) to their catalogues.
Tim Spalding, of Library Thing, wrote about it on the Thing-ology Blog and provided some sample JavaScript code in order to help libraries fold Google Books covers into the catalogue and add links to full-text. Other libraries have already modified and used Spalding’s code to add covers and text to their catalogues like Wageningen Library.
More information on libraries exploring the GBS API, including on the
