Bibliophile web geek Peter Harkins (LibraryThing: Malaprop) has created a sweet Firefox extension called SelectThing. SelectThing allows you to search LibraryThing from any web page. Peter writes:

“I’m a big fan of cataloging books I want to read on LibraryThing and often run across mentions of interesting books while browing the web. But it always distracted me to copy the book’s name, open a new tab, pull up LT, go to the add page, paste in the text, hit search… So, like a good geek, I wrote a Firefox extension to simplify it.”

Here’s how it goes: You’re reading a book review on the New York Times or your favorite blog and you want to add the book to your LibraryThing catalog (soon wish list too). You just select some text—maybe the title of the book, the author or an ISBN—right click and choose “Search on LibraryThing.” It opens a new tab with LibraryThing’s “Add Books” screen, and does the search too. It’s super quick and easy.

The extension is online at http://selectthing.mozdev.org (see more screenshots). The install process is standard (and easy). There’s a mailing list there, but Peter will also be monitoring this blog for feedback.

Let me be the first to offer mine: what a cool idea, and nicely done!

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