Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

General

What is BookJetty?

BookJetty is a social utility that connects you with your friends' bookshelves and checks books' availability in the libraries. More information at the About Us page.

How much doest it cost to use BookJetty?

It is free to use BookJetty.

Who is behind BookJetty?

BookJetty was designed and developed by Herryanto Siatono, founder of Pluit Solutions, a Ruby-On-Rails-infused web design and development house.

How does BookJetty fund itself and how can I help?

BookJetty startup and maintenance cost have been piling up each month. BookJetty earns a small referral fee for every book you purchase from Amazon.com through BookJetty. It also earns a small fee for every click you made on the third-party advertising.

If you are a user, you can help to support BookJetty simply by making it a habit to buy your books through BookJetty links; and do tell your friends about BookJetty. Though the referral fee and advertising revenue is meagre at the moment, every little support is a great encouragement to me. Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart.

Library Integration

Which libraries does BookJetty integrate with?

It currently integrates with more than 300 libraries from United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hongkong, Taiwan, Ireleand, South Africa. New libraries are added constantly based on suggestions from librarians and BookJetty users.

What does a library need to integrate with BookJetty?

A library must have Z39.50 gateway available, the gateway is supported by most of library Online Public Access Catalogs (OPAC). BookJetty will need the gateway hostname, port no and database name for the integration configuration. Often BookJetty will be able to guess the configuration options from the library OPAC URL address, but sometimes you may need to provide BookJetty with that information.

If a library OPAC does not support z39.50 gateway, can it still integrate with BookJetty?

Yes, it is possible through screen scrapping, but to develop an adapter for each library would be too hard to maintain. Thus a generic screen scrapping adapter with configurable rules will be developed in the future. Special integration through web services is also possible if web services are made available by the library.

How do I suggest my local library to be integrated with BookJetty?

To suggest your local library, please contact us. Please state the library name along with the OPAC URL address. BookJetty will try to guess its z39.50 gateway configuration options, if it is not successful, you may need to provide us with the gateway hostname, port no and database name. If you are not sure, you may need to check with your librarian for the availability of z39.50 gateway and its configuration information.

Does BookJetty need to query library catalog for each request?

No, it doesn't need to. There are some caching mechanism put in place to allow BookJetty to query the library catalog only when the cache has expired.

Why on some cases, a book is shown as not available, yet it is found in the library?

A book title can have more than one publications or editions, and every book publication or edition has a different International Standard Book Number (ISBN). While book enquiry to library catalog is through ISBN, so the mismatch is probably due to the book is a different publication or edition.

Book Store Integration

What does a bookstore need to integrate with BookJetty?

It needs to have web services API that allows BookJetty to query its catalog database.

What does a bookstore gain by integrating with BookJetty?

With a growing community of book lovers, having its presence in BookJetty will definitely help to increase its book sales.

What if a bookstore does not have web services API, can it still integrate with BookJetty?

Please send us an email, we will try to work something out.