It may have escaped public attention that we now have
[[Wikipedia:Book sources]],
the text of which is fetched whenever a user clicks an ISBN number in an article (instead of the previous, hardcoded list of sellers). The text "MAGICNUMBER" on that page is replaced with the ISBN number the user is searching for when it is displayed, so you can add "magic" search links to any bookseller you like.
Hopefully, this will allow us to address concerns regarding specific booksellers. I have started by adding links to all the listed sellers, so that you can conveniently read the article about Amazon.com before buying anything from them. We should also have library catalogs listed here, and maybe a note on the general problem of using ISBNs to locate books.
Regards,
Erik
On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
It may have escaped public attention that we now have
[[Wikipedia:Book sources]],the text of which is fetched whenever a user clicks an ISBN number in an article (instead of the previous, hardcoded list of sellers). The text "MAGICNUMBER" on that page is replaced with the ISBN number the user is searching for when it is displayed, so you can add "magic" search links to any bookseller you like.
Hopefully, this will allow us to address concerns regarding specific booksellers. I have started by adding links to all the listed sellers, so that you can conveniently read the article about Amazon.com before buying anything from them. We should also have library catalogs listed here, and maybe a note on the general problem of using ISBNs to locate books.
Actually, Erik, I discovered this feature last weekend, I like it an awful lot. (I used it to add links to a couple of books at [[Constantine XI]].)
Out of curiousity, is there a criteria for which booksellers we include? My favorite online bookseller -- Advanced Book Exchange (http://www.abebooks.com) -- is not listed, & if appropriate I think this webiste should be included.
Geoff should be added.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Wednesday, 11th June, 2003, at 17:59, Geoffrey Burling wrote:
Out of curiosity, is there a criteria for which booksellers we include?
Well, it has to have a site that uses ISBNs as the key to reference books in the URLs (otherwise, how do we generate a link to them for a particular book?)
My favourite online bookseller -- Advanced Book Exchange (http://www.abebooks.com) -- is not listed, & if appropriate I think this website should be included.
Sadly, as their books are second hand, ABE don't seem to offer an ISBN reference (each book lot has its own local ID instead). Because of this, we couldn't add it (AFAICT; IMBW and if so, someone please correct me :-)).
[Snip]
Yours, - -- James D. Forrester mailto:jon@eh.org | mailto:csvla@dcs.warwick.ac.uk mailto:jamesdforrester@hotmail.com | mailto:james@jdforrester.org
James D. Forrester wrote:
My favourite online bookseller -- Advanced Book Exchange (http://www.abebooks.com) -- is not listed, & if appropriate I think this website should be included.
Sadly, as their books are second hand, ABE don't seem to offer an ISBN reference (each book lot has its own local ID instead). Because of this, we couldn't add it (AFAICT; IMBW and if so, someone please correct me :-)).
Of course we could add a link; it just wouldn't be ISBN-indexed, so you'd want to add a note telling the user that they'll have to search the book by title / author manually.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Point your link at:
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/BookSearchPL
ABE gives the option of finding books published before the ISBN system was instituted.
Fred
From: Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 00:29:36 -0700 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please edit [[Wikipedia:Book sources]]
James D. Forrester wrote:
My favourite online bookseller -- Advanced Book Exchange (http://www.abebooks.com) -- is not listed, & if appropriate I think this website should be included.
Sadly, as their books are second hand, ABE don't seem to offer an ISBN reference (each book lot has its own local ID instead). Because of this, we couldn't add it (AFAICT; IMBW and if so, someone please correct me :-)).
Of course we could add a link; it just wouldn't be ISBN-indexed, so you'd want to add a note telling the user that they'll have to search the book by title / author manually.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I have edited Booksources and put a functioning link in that searchs ABE for ISBN. It links to advanced search page and is also functional for searching for books without ISBNs. However the ISBN link does not reach the edited page unless it has a valid ISBN. Please consider allowing access to the page using some link like ISBN n/a
Fred
From: Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 02:25:43 -0600 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please edit [[Wikipedia:Book sources]]
Point your link at:
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/BookSearchPL
ABE gives the option of finding books published before the ISBN system was instituted.
Fred
From: Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 00:29:36 -0700 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please edit [[Wikipedia:Book sources]]
James D. Forrester wrote:
My favourite online bookseller -- Advanced Book Exchange (http://www.abebooks.com) -- is not listed, & if appropriate I think this website should be included.
Sadly, as their books are second hand, ABE don't seem to offer an ISBN reference (each book lot has its own local ID instead). Because of this, we couldn't add it (AFAICT; IMBW and if so, someone please correct me :-)).
Of course we could add a link; it just wouldn't be ISBN-indexed, so you'd want to add a note telling the user that they'll have to search the book by title / author manually.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
I have edited Booksources and put a functioning link in that searchs ABE for ISBN. It links to advanced search page and is also functional for searching for books without ISBNs. However the ISBN link does not reach the edited page unless it has a valid ISBN. Please consider allowing access to the page using some link like ISBN n/a
[[Special:Booksources]] should do it.
Hmm, for some reason this doesn't display the custom text unless an ISBN has been given. Erik?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion-
Fred Bauder wrote:
I have edited Booksources and put a functioning link in that searchs ABE for ISBN. It links to advanced search page and is also functional for searching for books without ISBNs. However the ISBN link does not reach the edited page unless it has a valid ISBN. Please consider allowing access to the page using some link like ISBN n/a
[[Special:Booksources]] should do it.
Hmm, for some reason this doesn't display the custom text unless an ISBN has been given. Erik?
Most of the URLs on [[Wikipedia:Book sources]] stop working properly if they do not get passed the MAGICNUMBER variable. Therefore the [[Wikipedia: Book sources]] text is only displayed when an ISBN number is passed, otherwise the hardcoded text is used. An alternative would be an additional dynamically fetched page like [[Wikipedia:Book links]] for linking to booksellers without specifying an ISBN. My preference would be to hide the special page from the list of special pages, since I do not see why a static list should be handled in the form of a special page at all (and why it should deserve exposure in our list of special pages); [[Wikipedia:Book links]] could be created by anyone so inclined without it being dynamically fetched.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Hmm, for some reason this doesn't display the custom text unless an ISBN has been given. Erik?
Most of the URLs on [[Wikipedia:Book sources]] stop working properly if they do not get passed the MAGICNUMBER variable. Therefore the [[Wikipedia: Book sources]] text is only displayed when an ISBN number is passed, otherwise the hardcoded text is used.
Humble idea: strip out the paths from the URLs, so they go to the sites' front pages.
This could fail in some cases, perhaps, but it's just a thought.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
I think it is better if they go the advanced search page for the various sites.
Fred
From: Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 09:04:37 -0700 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please edit [[Wikipedia:Book sources]]
Erik Moeller wrote:
Hmm, for some reason this doesn't display the custom text unless an ISBN has been given. Erik?
Most of the URLs on [[Wikipedia:Book sources]] stop working properly if they do not get passed the MAGICNUMBER variable. Therefore the [[Wikipedia: Book sources]] text is only displayed when an ISBN number is passed, otherwise the hardcoded text is used.
Humble idea: strip out the paths from the URLs, so they go to the sites' front pages.
This could fail in some cases, perhaps, but it's just a thought.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l