How many times have you been browsing Amazon, found an interesting book, and wondered whether you could just borrow it from the library?

Here's a "bookmarklet" for looking up books in the library catalog: Howard County, MD Library. Drag it to your link toolbar (not favorites! it doesn't work there).

How this works:

1. Search Amazon for a book of interest: note the big long hairy URL includes the ISBN number, which is a unique identifier
2. Click on the link on your tool bar, which runs a Javascript program
3. This parses the ISBN number out of Amazon's URL, constructs an appropriate URL for HoCo's IPac library catalog service, and submits it
4. If the book is there, you'll see the catalog display: otherwise you'll see something like "sorry, there are no matches"

This is the brainchild of Jon Udell's LibraryLookup project, a specific instance of turning URL's into APIs. Check these tips if it doesn't seem to be working.

More often than not, when you think you've had some new and brilliantly unique idea ... somebody else already did too.

In the case of Scripture Permalinks, the publishers of the new English Standard Version "get it"! A link like this

http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=John+3:16

is what's behind John 3:16. This effectively turns a URL into an API, as Jon Udell says: "If you build Web-based information systems -- and who doesn't? -- it's a great idea to  wrap them in Web services APIs. "

The ESV builds on the traditions of the RSV, long my favorite for detailed Scripture study, using the "essentially literal" approach.  I recognize enough names among the endorsers to be confident that this will be a good translation. I'll be referring to the ESV in Blogos from now one. (now, if i just had a Radio macro to construct the link!) 

Here's an example of the search box they make available (HTML is here)