Individual Bookseller Websites

OpenSearch browser plugins are now available for viaLibri. If you are using Internet Explorer7+ or FireFox2+ these plugins will allow you to perform simple viaLibri searches directly from your toolbar regardless of where on the internet you might be browsing. There are separate plugins for searching by author, title or keywords. To install any (or all) of them you only need to click on one of the links below...



Click HERE to install the Author Search browser plugin

Click HERE to install the Title Search browser plugin

Click HERE to install the Keyword Search browser plugin


Once a plugin is installed, it should be possible to select it from the list displayed when you click on the search box located at the right side of your browser. We would like to note that the addition of this feature came at the request of Matt Caywood, one of our users, who first created it for his own use and then generously offered the code for us to copy. The long viaLibri “to-do” list is now one item shorter. We are always happy to hear from our users with requests for features, even ones we have already planned. For this purpose, a contact form can be found under the “More” tab at the top of every page. [Posted: 24/4/2009]

The latest enhancements to our rare book metasearch now make it possible to find books being offered on the independent websites of more than two hundred individual booksellers. When you find a book for sale by one of these booksellers you will now be able to go to them directly to complete your purchase. Descriptions for these books will also include a link to the booksellers home page, making it easy to explore their specialized inventory and look for additional items which may be of interest. [Posted: 31/10/2008]

We are pleased to announce a new feature that we believe will be well received by many of our regular users. It is now possible to have permanent filters for excluding specific item types from your search results. If print-on-demand or paperback editions are irrelevant to your interests you can now set up permanent search filters which will exclude these items (or any others you may define) from all your search results.

Permanent search filters are available to all registered users. For further details on how to use this feature please click HERE. [Posted: 30/7/2008]

We have just completed another expansion of our Quick Query Library Search tool, bringing to 72 the total number of catalogues now available. Additions have been made in all in categories, including four more national union catalogues (Canada, Norway, Czech Republic and Hungary) and 5 university libraries (Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, McGill and Carnegie-Mellon). Specialized collections at the Museum of Modern Art, The Royal Horticultural Society and Hunt Botanical Institute can now also be searched. Another addition is Google Book Search, which covers the world’s largest selection of digitized books and will, we trust, be of interest to many of our users.

Future additions to this list are anticipated and we welcome suggestions regarding any other bibliographic catalogues or databases that would further enhance this research tool. For recommendations or comments of any sort you may contact us HERE .

We would also like to thank Oak Knoll Books for joining us as the sponsor for our library search. Their participation in our site inaugurates a new phase in our growth. In the near future we anticipate opening further opportunities for book-related advertising on viaLibri. If these are of interest please feel free to contact us using the link above. [Posted: 22/6/2008]

A major update to our book metasearch has just been launched, including several new features and internal improvements.

Our most important enhancement is the addition of several more bookselling sites. New to viaLibri are: Amazon (the American, Canadian, British, German and French sites are all searched), Biblion, Uniliber and IOBABooks. Each site brings a significant addition to the variety and quality of our search results. Uniliber and IOBABooks are both operated by independent bookseller associations, something we have always been eager to support. (A third of the sites we now search are operated by similar organisations, all of them committed to high standards on the part of their members).

With these additions, we are now able to offer our users the most complete and diverse selection of old and rare books available anywhere on the internet from a single search form.

The biggest impact to our search results will probably come from the addition of the 5 Amazon sites. We have taken great pains to develop a method for searching Amazon that will yield the most interesting results for bibliophiles and collectors. Using the standard "Rare Books" setting on our search form will generally bring the oldest and most valuable books from Amazon first. This means that it is now possible to include in our results early editions of collected authors that may be offered for sale on Amazon and nowhere else. We think our capabilities in this are unique. Try comparing viaLibri search results for Charles Dickens (any title) with the results from any other metasearch and you will see what we mean.

We have also added several new features that we think will be of interest to our users. These include:

We have just completed a major upgrade of our Quick Query Library Search tool, including more than doubling the number of sites we include. A total of 57 international library union catalogues, bibliographic census catalogues and individual library OPACs can now be searched from a single form. Among the newly added sites are VD16 and EDIT 16 (for sixteenth century German and Italian imprints, respectively), 10 national union catalogues, three national libraries and 20 individual research and university libraries noted for their collections of early and rare books.

We have also added a "Search History" tool that records your recent searches and provides a link to previous results. This link can easily be cut and pasted into email or any other hypertext document, making it possible to provide direct access to the library records of sites whose URLs become invalid after session expiration.

Many of these newly added sites were suggested to us by users. If there is a useful online library catalogue that you would like to see added to our list please let us know.

To use our Quick Query Library Search Tool just click on the "Libraries" tab at the top of the screen. Or click HERE..

To suggest additional online library catalogues you would like to see added to our search: Click  HERE. [Posted: 30/7/2007]