Google Books Search API
The Google AJAX Search API can be overwhelming with its myriad of options and possible uses, which is why Google has a whole section of “Wizards.” Tools like the Map Search Wizard and the News Bar Wizard make it easy to generate cut-and-paste code that you can drop into your site.
Earlier today I ran across a new wizard called the Book Search wizard. Google bills the Book Search Wizard as a means to show off books that interest you on your blog. While there’s no click through revenue to be made since the links just lead to Google Books, it’s an easy way to help others discover books you’ve enjoyed or found helpful.
To use the Book Wizard (or any other wizard) you’ll need to have a free Google Search API key. Once you’ve got your API key all you need to do is select some book topics and enter your blog URL. You can also choose between vertical or horizontal layout. The wizard will do the rest.
The resulting code can then be dropped anywhere on your page and you’ll see something like this:
In this case I enter Python, Javascript and Perl. (Note that the Wired blog stylesheet is causing the above code to render images a bit strangely, there appears to be some sort of border element being applied.)
In this case a fair number of the results are O’Reilly books which is nice for viewers since the fulltext of O’Reilly books are viewable in Google books (most of the time, some sections are occasionally not included). Depending on your search terms and the results they generate the books may or may not be fully searchable.
