Love SPL

Seattlest loves the Seattle Public Library system. So what if the downtown library can, from certain perspectives, be compared to a smushed cheese grater? We hardly ever make it through the front doors, and we'll tell you why -- in a bit.

But first, if you have $1 to spare, we want to tell you about the Friends of the Library Freeway Park Book Sale (which is a bit of a misnomer, since they also sell used CDs and videos). As we've indicated, it all happens at Freeway Park, 700 Seneca St. on Fridays in August:

The sales will take place near the waterfall at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Seneca Street. See below for a schedule:

* 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Aug. 12
* 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19
* 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26

All items sell for $1. [Ed. note: One frickin' dollar! All items!] Items for the sale are donated by private individuals, book stores and the Library. Proceeds benefit the Library.

So that's very nice. Now, about becoming a power cyberuser of the public library.

If you visit the Seattle Public Library site and you have your library card with you, a whole vista of opportunities lies before you just by logging in to your account.

Seattlest has been using the online Request Hold to have books available way across town deposited at our convenient local branch in just a day or two. The library emails us when the books are waiting to be picked up -- but hold on, it just got more Buck Rogers. Now the library is offering personal rss feeds based on your account information. You can now keep track of items you've checked out, things you have on hold (and their status), and more, through your rss reader or at your My Yahoo! page.

If you check out DVDs, this process saves you from vulturing about the DVD rack the times the staff is restocking the shelves. Just request a hold on the DVD you want online, and you'll be notified when it's in.

Stealing a page from Amazon, the library has also added a "My List" service recently. You can create whatever list categories to keep track of whatever you want: books you've already read, books you'd like to read, books people have recommended to you -- and of course it's not just books. There are books on tape, too. And CDs. And DVDs.

What the library has offered for some time, but not that many people know about, is subscriptions to a variety of online databases. Again, you just log in to your account, and all the glories of the OED or ProQuest lie at your fingertips.

Finally, speaking of stealing a page from Amazon, the fiendish creators of Greasemonkey make it possible for Firefox users to install a little script so that when you're browsing books on Amazon, a link appears letting you check whether SPL has the book in its collection. (It picks the ISBN number off the page and automatically inserts it into the library's Search by ISBN form.)

It's really something, isn't it, this modern age? We can hardly keep up with it all. But when we do, you're the first to know. Promise.