New browser extension may get you to visit the DC library more

Kurt Goetsch

The D.C. Public Library does a lot of great work in the community — from expanding outreach for homeless patrons to creating cool special programming built around authors like George Orwell. But when compared with the ease of shopping on Amazon or exploring new releases on the social media site Goodreads, the DCPL online catalog be downright cumbersome.

That's where "Books for D.C." — a new extension for the Google Chrome browser — comes in. It automatically searches the DCPL catalog when you view a book's page on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Goodreads, and tells you whether you can find a copy at the local library.

Yes, Amazon Kindle owners, this includes eBooks as well.

You can see a GIF of it in action here.

Emanuel Feld, the programmer behind the extension, says the idea occurred to him because it always seems to be Amazon — and not the library — that shows up at the top of a Google search for a book. He wanted to level the playing field.

"It seemed like the sort of issue that was ripe for tackling. I spend a lot of time at the library, and they're doing all sorts of really great things — they're very forward-thinking," Feld says. "I thought this would be a good project to show what the library has to offer."

Feld doesn't have any official relationship with the D.C. Public Library, but says he did consult them for information about how their catalog works and received lots of positive feedback.

The extension is actually Feld's second effort to make it easier for the public to get information about what's available at the local library. He also recently launched a @booksfordc Twitter account that uses a script to scan the library's catalog every hour to look for recent additions and tweet them out to the public — functionality that their existing catalog technology just doesn't have.

He says he's also thinking about ways to use his coding skills to address a problem recently covered in the Washington Post: the unequal distribution of resources at D.C.'s school libraries.

"I wanted to build a bunch of tools that were mutually self-supporting, so this is part of that," he says.

The extension is still a work in progress, and Feld is soliciting feedback on his website. Other civically-minded techies who want to get involved are encouraged to shoot him an email or seek him out at Code for D.C. meetups.

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