I announced yesterday Scriblio’s integration of Google’s new book viewability API that links to full text, previews, or additional book information (depending on copyright status and publisher foresight). Now that it’s live with Plymouth’s full catalog, I spent a moment browsing the collection and taking note of what books had what.

I get no preview for A Baby Sister For Frances, but another of Russell Hoban’s books, A Bargain For Frances. has one, even if the image quality is poor. My friend Joe Monninger has just one book that includes a preview, A Barn In New England.

Ironically The Search, Designing The Obvious, and A Passion For Books don’t (neither does Online Pornography, though it’d likely be a let down for most of the people looking for it). I’m glad to see that An Introduction To Book History and The Future Of The Book both have online previews.

It’s good stuff, and if I was smarter I’d get stats on how often the preview link was clicked. And if I could do it without tracking more information than I want, I’d love stats on how often the preview leads to a checkout or in house use. (I’m confident, however, that more frequently previewed books will be among the more frequently use books).

(crossposted at Scriblio.net)

Using the newly released book viewability API in Google Book Search, Plymouth State University’s Lamson Library and Learning Commons is one of the first libraries to move beyond simply listing their books online and open them up to reading and searching via the web.

Take a look at how this works with books by Plymouth authors Bruce Heald and Joseph Monninger. The “Browse on Google” link in the New Features section leads to extended previews of their works where you can browse excerpts of the books and search the full text.

Matthew Batchelder wrote the JavaScript that makes it work, and all the features are incorporated in the current version of Scriblio. To implement it in an existing Scriblio installation, take a look at Matt’s script how it’s included in the theme’s header.php. You’ll also need to make sure your site’s catalog records include ISBNs to link with (I’ll be adding support for LCCNs and OCLCNs soon). If you’re using the standard MARC or III importers and your source records contain ISBNs, you should be all set.

Hat tip to Tim for giving me the hookup.