Having blogged about adding the OU Voyager library catalogue as a Firefox search option, I started reflecting on the other library tools and services I've doodled with in the past, with a view to scoping out what might go in to an OU Library toolbar. So what follows is a short, incomplete, and time-hopping history, followed by some thoughts on what I'm going to put into my first Firefox toolbar...
Way back when, before I got my head round Firefox extensions, I tried to simplify the way I accessed the OU library catalogue by setting up the URL rewrite:
http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/library/keyword
to search the OU voyager library catalogue for a particular keyword.
(By the by, here's the Apache snippet that does the rewriting:
RewriteRule library/(.*) http://voyager.open.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=$1&Search_Code=FT*&CNT=22 . If you want to know more about the make up of the actual search URL, I blogged about it here: Hacking Voyager URIs. If the whole concept of URL rewriting is new to you, then check out this posting by Russ Shannon on URL Rewriting.)
I seem to remember the actual rewrite was inspired by Jon Udell's Library Lookup bookmarklet which lets you look up a book in your local library if its ISBN appears in the URL of the web page you're looking at (as it does, for example, when you are looking at a book on Amazon). For your covenience, here's a copy of the OU Library lookup bookmarklet if you don't already have it: OU Library Lookup Bookmarklet. Just drag the link onto your bookmark toolbar, then clck it when you're looking at a book on Amazon, for example...
- ROUTES RSS feed, which can be used as the basis for a Firefox Live Bookmark;
- OU Resolver Google Scholar extension which adds OpenURL 0.1 buttons to the results of a search in Google Scholar (based on an orginal extension written by Peter Binkley and simnce largely superceded by the much more usable OpenURL Referrer for Google Scholar.
In addition, there are quite a few other library related add-ins for Firefox floating around in the wild, such as the Athens toolbar (tell me more...).
Elsewhere, the FastJack: My Library Toolbar from Jackson Library, Stanford, doesn't appear to have made it out in the wild (yet...) for Firefox looks pretty useful and perhaps suggests some functionality for an OU Library toolbar...
So - what's on my wish list for just such a thing that is short term achievable (i.e. I more or less know how to do it already...;-):
- catalogue keyword (at least) search (Voyager, ROUTES);
- OU targetted OpenURL markup added into Google Scholar results;
- MyAthens toolbar functionality included;
- OU Library Lookup bookmarklet;
- automatic sign in to MyOpenLibrary.
It would also be cool if the results of a ROUTES search (e.g. via the RSS feed generated from my OUseful ROUTES search) could also be fed into a live bookmark menu :-).
More thoughts will foloow, perhaps in a post with version 0.1 of the toolbar :-)
PS [note to self] - build a tool that makes looking up libraries near me easier to use, e.g. by town or postcode search, or by checking out a cookie (or even MyOpenLibrary preferences...).