Linking to Ruby books to find them at local libraries

There is a neat website called WorldCat that web pages can hyperlink to for information on a given book.

The benefits of doing this is that the page linked to will provide the user with quick access to the local library catalog information on that particular book.

While many pages on the web will provide links to sites where the user can buy a book, this

The best, not to mention most comprehensive, book I own on the Ruby programming language is Programming Ruby, 2nd ed. by Dave Thomas with Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt (ISBN: 0974514055).

The URL for the book at Worldwide Library Cooperative is:

  http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/0974514055

The syntax of this URL is very simple:

  http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/ISBN_number

Here is a URL that links to the 1st edition of the book Agile Web Development with Rails:

 http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/0-9766940-0-X

Generated web pages could easily embed these links for books that are cited in the text.

Some Wikis allow defining custom tags which get translated to URLs. They support string substitution of parameters passed to the markdown tags into a position indicated by a placeholder in a URL template. If they do, a markdown tag named something like LibraryBook could be defined.

There is a web page with more information on how to Link directly to an ISBN/ISSN in Open WorldCat

In the meantime, you can see if the books above are at your local library!