OUseful Info

More Library Toolbars

Last week I posted a screencast on the features supported by the Jackson Library Toolbar.

Since then, I've discovered this Firefox Library Extensions, which pointed me in the direction of a couple more exciting toolbars:

- the HALBar Toolbar, and
- the Maldura Library Toolbar.

When I'm back on a machine with Camtasia installed on it, I'll do another toolbar feature screencast looking at these extensions, but for now you'll have to make do with a screenshot (that also includes my first attempt at an OU Library Toolbar [top] along with the MyAthens toolbar [bottom]) and a brief description:

So - very briefly then, what's on offer?

At the top of the screenshot, my OU Library toolbar provides a drop down list of homepages, the search box, a drop down list of which catalgue to search, a button that uses the textbox search term to search directly on the OU Voyager catalogue, a Library Lookup shortcut, a shortcut to Librarians on Call and a shortcut to My Library Record. (This is not too dissimilar to the Jackson Library Toolbar.)

The HALBar provides a set of shortcuts to various homepages, a drop down list of available catalogues, followed by a second drop down list of searches (keyword, title, ISBN, and so on) and then the search textbox. This simple design allows you to offer a semblance of semi-advanced search on the catalogues in quite an efficient way.

The Maldura Library Toolbar is one of the most sophisticated search toolbars I've seen to date, at least in its use of widgets!

A series of info pages (including a pop-up toolbar preferences window) are followed by a couple of menus containing homepage shortcuts. This is followed by a series of different catalogue searches. Each one allows you to search on one of a variety of search fields (tile, author, etc.) via a search menu:

It is also possible to highlight the search term within the results page.

Finally, the MyAthens toolbar provides access to journals and databases through the Athens Authentication service: a dropdown list identifies titles that your Athens subscription entitles you access to.

One facility not offered by any of the toolbars is that provided by the OpenURL Referrer for Google Scholar. This extension adds a link from a Google Scholar results page to an OepnURL resolver (so the electronic text version of a journal paper, for example, may be linked to from the results page).

And one extension I haven't seen yet, but that shouldn't be too hard to implement, would provide a link from an ISBN to a copy of the book (if it has been scanned in/uploaded yet) on Google Print.

All the toolbars described offer overlapping functionality, though with some differences in terms of usability/layout. Non-toolbar extensions too offer functionality that could be included as partof a library toolbar extension.

Several questions now occur to me:

- what functionality should a library toolbar include?
- to what extent should the toolbar be customisable by the user in terms of layout and/or functionality?
- to what extent would a generic toolbar - customisable by a user for searches on a particular library - be useful?
- to what extent would a generic toolbar - customisable by a library IT specialist for searches on a particular library, and redistributed by the library itself - be useful?

All comments, thoughts and Trackbacks on this topic will be much appreciated...

Posted by ajh59 at May 30, 2005 10:38 PM