Book Burro

I consume a lot of books.  Most of them are reading to my daughter, but I also read my share of fiction and non-fiction and I'm trying now to keep track of them on goodreads.com.  But unlike some people I know, I'm not really a book horder, almost never re-read a novel and thus like to avoid actually buying books (you know, keeping them trees alive).

If I do need to get a book, I'll look for a deal.  For my online purchases, bookpool.com has great prices for technical books, but mostly I get stuff from Amazon.  Now mater what, I will always check out books on Amazon because I find their user reviews very useful.  And because BookBurro plays nicely with Amazon.

BookBurro, "the book browser companion", is a FireFox browser extension that, among other things, adds a floating window to Amazon.com pages that allows you to see the prices other online stores charge for the book.  No big deal, there are other comparison shopping tool, right?  Well, BookBurro also integrates with WorldCat and lets you see which libraries have copies of that book.  And Austin Public Library happens to use WorldCat!

This is how I end up reading books for free these days:

1. Some book review (on a blog, radio, whatever) piques my interest.
2. I look it up on Amazon.com and check out the reviews
3. I pop open the BookBurro window and it (hopefully) lists APL as having it available
4. I click on the APL link to see which branches have them, and if necessary, request it to be trnsferred to my branche by placing a place a hold on it
   
5. APL notifies me when the book is available for pickup via email

Beside Book Burro, I also use Library Elf to keep notified when my books are due or when my books on hold are available.  APL now send you an email when this happens, but Library Elf also alerts you via an RSS feed.