How should I design a table with clickable rows?

Question

I have a table with information about all loans a client had. This table looks like this

 Book_Id | BookType_Title |  StartDate  |   EndDate   |
---------+----------------+-----------+---------------+
    1234 | Test1          | 01.01.2013  | 01.02.2013  |
    1337 | Test1          | 01.01.2013  | 01.02.2013  |
    2814 | Test3          | 01.01.2013  | 01.02.2013  |
    3812 | Test4          | 01.01.2013  | 01.02.2013  |

Okay so as you can see, the Book Id 1234 and 1337 refers to the same BookType, which has the title Test1. 2814 and 3812 refer to other BookTypes.

The user (of the program) should be able to click either on the book's id to get information about this specific Book or on the booktype's title to get information about this specific BookType.

Now, there are different ways where to put the links:

1. I could make 1234, 1337, etc. a link but the program should be as intuitive as possible. So having different links in a row could make it a bit confusingly.
2. I could do it with javascript (jquery): When the user clicks on the row, a popup asks him, what to open: the book's information page or the booktype's information page.

I'd really appreciate any other thoughts!

What are pros and cons of the 2 ways explained above?

Answer 1

The pro of making them links is that they are readily identifiable as links.

The con of a pop-up is that pop-ups can be annoying and it's adding one more step to the process of the user trying to get to the information they are looking for.

As such, I suggest keeping them as links.

Answer 2

How much information you have to display ?

If there is not too much you can use a tooltip like this one :

Answer 3

Is there any point of treating a book id and book type of the same book, separately?

I would assume when I click the ID of any particular book, I will get the ID, type and other related information in whatever form you wish (a new window, overlay, tooltip).

A pop up with options doesn't make much sense since, first, you click the row, and then select which option you want. Two clicks for any action. And since you made a pop-up you have to worry about not covering the row so the user can refer back to see what option he wanted.

A better solution would be to have 2 links. User selects whichever option he wants and that is it. A single click. There is no confusion in having multiple links in the row since you are attaching them to a cell and not the row. It is clear that the link is for that particular property of the particular row.