A Chrome extension which checks the availability of Goodreads books at the Calgary Public Library.
Spoiler Alert! Most of the time they are unavailable, but this extension is meant to make the treasure hunt for your next book easier. It's approximately 7x faster than the traditional way of checking a book's availability.
I created this extension because I wanted to reduce the time I spent looking for a book ( and switching between tabs) and increase my reading time.
- Click on the green button labelled Code, then select Download a Zip Package. Then, unzip the folder in your preferred directory.
- Go to: "chrome://extensions" and turn on Developer mode. Developer mode should be in the upper right corner.
- Click on the "Load unpacked" button in the upper left corner of the web page, and select the Borrow-Me folder you unzipped. Done! You've added Borrow Me to your Chrome extensions.
- Heads up! Borrow Me might be in the "access requested" section in your extension's settings. You can check this by clicking on the puzzle piece button on Chrome while on the Goodreads web page. Correct it by clicking on the three vertical circles on the right side of the Borrow Me logo in the puzzle piece pop-up. Then click on "This can read and change site data", and then click "On goodreads.com". Then, open up the CPL Overdrive page and do the same thing.
- Go to a Goodreads page that contains "/book/show" in the URL. You can do this by going to the Goodreads page for any book.
- Wait 2s, the book will be highlighted red (unavailable) or green (available), click on the Borrow Me extension icon for the exact wait time. Beware! The extension will open an Overdrive tab which it will use to check the book's availability, as unfortunately, Overdrive doesn't provide API access to developers.
- Continue browsing - the extension will automatically check the availability of a book each time you go to a new book page on Goodreads without you needing to do anything, enjoy!
