Bookjetty.com is my first initiative to release an application for the public. I found myself doing repetitive tasks of finding good books in Amazon, and checking each book if they are available in Singapore National Library (NLB).

The chore was quite time consuming, so I decided to create a search engine that combines both results under one roof. The concept is not new, but lately famously known as Mashup, a website that combines the result from multiple sources seamlessly. A9.com search engine is an example of that, Bezurk.com, a travel search engine, is another example; and one of awes me is Trulia.com, it combines the search results from real estate sites and merged them into Google Map.

Stunning, isnt’ it? Thanks to the advancement in Javascript lately, the introduction of AJAX and browser suport for DOM document manipulations, all these Web 2.0 experience are made possible.

The site was designed from library user perspective. It aims to help user to find good books as fast as possible in the library.

• Popup is  used to avoid unnecessary clicking.
• Catalogue location is grouped for easy visibility.
• Sorted by “Not On Loan” groups on the top, as that group matters most.
• Book locations are grouped for easy readability.
• Total books, Total Available books, Total Not On Loan books in the listing, for a quick view of book availability.
• Short description for each book on mouse over for those who don’t have time to read too much.
• Print catalogue to bring it as a reference to the library.
• Sales ranking and customer average reviews for quick assesment of the book quality.

Bookjetty.com is still at its infancy, sometimes the listing by amazon only shows the latest edition of a book, and the latest edition may not be found in the library, but other editions may be available. This was due to the Amazon webservices Application Programming Interface (API) does not provide other editions information. But thanks to another online book service, called xISBN service, which provides other book editions list. The list will then be matched back to retrieve book information from Amazon and NLB.

I will be working on this feature this week. So stay tune. Thanks to those who have find this site useful and thanks to many who have sent in their feedback too. Please help to spread it to your friends, family or your kids too.

Note that currently the site is hosted on a shared server in the States, so the response maybe a bit slow at night.