July 10, 2007 By Around Us

A toolbar built for you

If you are a tech-junkie like me, and you are equally enamored with Firefox extensions, your active browser window real estate may be ever increasingly growing smaller. With RSS Tickers and Link buttons for everything from Del.icio.us to Sage, having something at your fingertips which you will actually use everyday becomes ever more important. One tool which I have recently started considering for this purpose is made by a company called Conduit. The tool in question is a customizable toolbar. This toolbar can be crafted by a library and then distributed to their community. It features many interesting highlights such as RSS messages, a term highlighter, bookmarking, and email interfacing.

Though there may be some unwanted ads brought forth after a toolbar-initiated search (via Google, Yahoo, or perhaps a library search system) the ability to provide the same functions on each users' toolbar should be of interest to some. I also liked the ability to brand the bar with your library's name or even logo (provided you can make it that small and still readable).

Other new technologies related to this topic are things such as:

 

• LibX - A Firefox extension that allows you to connect to your library catalog while browsing pages on the internet
• Library Lookup - This bookmarklet acts in a similar manner to LibX but isn’t always as reliable as the prior
• Eurekster Swicki Beta - This customized search interface and site map tool provides focused retrieval opportunities

 

Be sure to check out these posts for more info: LITA Blog