[Web4lib] Amazon ratings

[Susan Hansen]

We have a wonderful volunteer that uses bookscouter.com to scan our donations. This site consolitates an ISBN search of many different buyers like Powells and returns a price each vendor will pay for an item.  Some will take used textbooks, library discards etc. Some vendors give her payments to PayPal account, others do virtual credit.  For example, she get about $500 every 6 weeks at Powells, which I turn around and spend on replacing missing copies in our collection.
 
Now if someone would just write a batch program to submit a group of isbns, return the best price on each item by vendor we'd be in real business :)
 
 
 
Susan Hansen, MA, CIRS, 
Librarian
Rochester Public Library
101 2nd Street SE
Rochester MN  55904-3776

susan at rochester.lib.mn.us 
www.rochesterpubliclibrary.org 
Aim & Yahoo screenname: RPLmnInfo  
MSN: reference at rochester.lib.mn.us 

blog: http://ripplesblog.blogspot.com ( http://ripplesblog.blogspot.com/ )

office phone: 507.328.2370
fax: 507.328.2385 


>>> Cab Vinton <bibliwho at gmail.com> 6/19/2009 2:13 PM >>>
Folks donate used books here by the box-full and it would be helpful
if we had a quick & dirty way of determining both the value of the
items and their quality.

Would like to bounce the following idea of the Collective Brain to see
if it has merit or if there are better alternatives.

1. Have volunteers scan the barcodes/ ISBNs into a text file
2. Use the ISBNs to populate a pseudo-bookstore which will draw off of
Amazon to pull prices and product ratings.
3. Cull the highest priced items for potential sale on Ebay or Amazon.
4. Cull the highest rated items for consideration for addition to our
collection.

Thoughts?

Would be particularly grateful if anyone can provide suggestions for
Step 2. We have an Amazon Associates account & have put up an aStore
-- hmm, sounds a bit rude actually -- but I haven't figured out how to
get product ratings displayed.

Cheers,

Cab Vinton, Director
Sanbornton Public Library
Sanbornton, NH


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