Image from Conduit toolbars video

One of the most common queries that Sam and I get is to do with how to promote e-resources in order to increase take-up by staff and students. There are some ideas in the RSC Wales E-resources information area, but an idea that has popped up a few times recently is that of using customised toolbars.

The basic idea is that a toolbar is created that links to (or in some cases searches) the library’s resources, making it easier for users to find quality information for their teaching and learning (see this article). Not all toolbar solutions cost anything – for every company such as Besttoolbars which sells toolbar solutions, there are free options such as the Google Toolbar for Firefox, or Conduit. There are even specialist browser-plugin toolbars for libraries, such as LibX. These can do much more than just link to resources. A selection from the LibX feature list includes:

• The “Magic Button” – simply select an article title and have Scholar & the OpenURL resolver deliver an appropriate (accessible, “paid-for”) copy. This is a feature we use daily for our own research, it’s proved to be a tremendous time saver.
• Lookups of a complete book title, author, or ISBN – usually by selecting & right-clicking on a webpage.
• Proxying a page or link when coming from off-campus.
• Using cues and autolinking to get from pages that a user frequently uses to the library catalog.

Toolbars that appear as browser plugins could easily be installed across a college, with the advantage that IP address recognition can then allow users straight through to online resources. The LRS could also make the plugin available to users for their home computers and laptops, and in conjunction with appropriate access management (e.g. Shibboleth, or proxy solutions) the user at home could also have a seamless experience.

Note that toolbars don’t have to be something integrated into a browser – with a bit of creative thinking an LRS could incorporate them into their webpages, Moodle, the college desktop or even the OPAC. Let us know if you have tried this kind of approach – and how successful it was!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Library 2.0, e-resources, resource discovery, service promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.