Using Catalyst: Searching from Online Bookstores
Arthur Lakes Library
Colorado School of Mines
1400 Illinois Street
Golden, Colorado 80401
Phone: (303) 273-3911
Fax: (303) 273-3199
http://www.mines.edu/library
CATALYST is our online public access catalog. It provides information about our holdings and access to many other useful functions.
Searching Catalyst from Online Bookstores

Adding a type of "Favorites" bookmark to your browser allows you to perform a one-click search of Catalyst for a book displayed in Amazon.com and other online book vendors.

Setting Up the Online Bookstore to Catalyst Search

  1. Drag this Catalyst ISBN Search link to your Favorites bar in your browser (or right-click on the link and select "Add to Favorites").  Note that your browser must allow pop-ups for this to work.
  2. View a book at an online book site. Amazon.com works well, as do Barnes & Nobel and Borders.
  3. Click on the "Catalyst ISBN Search" Favorites Link you created in Step 1.  A new Window will pop-up with your ISBN search result:

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Click to enlarge

How the Search Works

The bookmark created above is not a normal bookmark. It is a bookmarklet, or, a small piece of javascript code that looks at the address of the Web page you're looking at, searches for the term ISBN, and then builds a Catalyst search based on that ISBN. If there is no ISBN in the Web page address, the bookmarklet will result in a null or empty search.