[Foundation-l] Advertisement and service at the same time

[Delirium]

Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 20/03/2008, Florence Devouard <anthere at anthere.org> wrote:
>
>
>   
>>  I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
>>  matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
>>  provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
>>  book. Typically, an Amazon link.
>>     
>
> I make a practice of removing well-meaning Amazon links, because we
> currently have a structure to do this trivially, automatically, and
> with a lot broader scope.
>
> [The following is as it works on enwp - I believe many other projects
> have the extension, but I wouldn't want to claim to know how they
> handle it! The model should be similar, though.]
>
> Any text string of the form "ISBN xxx", where xxx is a ten-digit or
> thirteen-digit valid ISBN or ISBN-13 string, will link to a page at
> [[Special:Booksources]]. It will create, automatically, a set of
> deeplinks into the pages of a wide variety of online booksellers
> (including Amazon) - but also to a wide range of library catalogues,
> book exchange sites, etc.
>   
I agree a generic interface is the right way to go, but the main problem 
I have with it is that it seems almost purposely designed to make it 
hard to find a link to a bookseller. I'm not sure if this was the 
intent, but it comes across as if the person who made the layout is sort 
of ideologically against buying books or something. You have to scroll 
through something like 8 pages of links to hundreds of different 
libraries before you can find any possible link to a bookseller the 
book---"Booksellers" is currently section 7... and section 5 which 
precedes it has *64* subsections.

It'd be somewhat easier if there were only a handful of links at the 
top, maybe to 2-4 library meta-search engines (e.g. WorldCat) and to 2-4 
bookseller meta-search engines (e.g. AddAll), before dumping the reader 
into a morass of literally hundreds of links to individual libraries. Do 
we even need the latter? Surely someone who has access to, say, the 
University of Colorado at Boulder library, already knows how to visit 
ucblibraries.colorado.edu, or else can find it through WorldCat/etc. if not.

-Mark