Langsdale Link

Contents:

• Goodbye From the Current Director
  
• UB Faculty are in Scholarly Journals but We Can't Get Them Out
  
• A Toolbar ( or two) for Your Browser
  
• Ensuring Access to Government Documents
  
• IDIS 110 - Information Literacy
  
• Renovation Updates
  
• February Finds

A Toolbar (or two) for Your Browser
by Michael Shochet

If you like enhancing the functionality of your browser, there are a few free toolbars available that will allow you to search Langsdale Library’s catalog and databases from anywhere on the Web. Take a look at the tools below and let me know what you think. These should present no problems when installing on most home or personal computers; however, if you want to install them on campus computers, you may need someone with administrative privileges to install the toolbars for you.

Firefox Users

A library toolbar from libx.org can be downloaded here: http://libx.org/editions/download.php?edition=72D431A9

It might take a little time to understand how all of the features work, but it is pretty nifty (well, to a librarian, anyway) once you get the hang of it. More information is available at the link above, but some of the toolbar’s features include the following:

1. Provides a toolbar that allows you to enter search terms.  The search can be run in either:
   • the University System of Maryland (USMAI) catalog (including the ability for a BOOLEAN search using  title, author, subject or keyword)
   • the Langsdale Library catalog
   • the e-journals list in ResearchPort (to find if Langsdale has access to a particular journal title)
   • Google Scholar
     
2. If the web page you're visiting contains and ISBN for a specific book , a icon should appear next to the book title.  Clicking on this icon will initiate a search in our catalog to see if we have that book. It actually actually conducts something called an xISBN search which checks for other versions of the same book (a hardcover book can have a different ISBN than a paperback version, as can different editions, translations, etc.). If you are on campus, this search will default to a search of Langsdale's holdings, while off-campus users will default to a search of the USMAI catalog.
   
3. Right click any ISSN, ISBN or Title (either journal or book) on a web page to access an option (with the logo) that reads “Search for a Journal @ UB…”.  Selecting this option will open up a “find it” window that will (most of the time) provide a link to the catalog and/or to ResearchPort if we have access to said title.  Don't be thrown by the text of menu option: you can search for a book title just as well as a journal title.
   
4. When you do a search in Google, there will be a “UB” icon above the search results.  Clicking on the icon will run your Google search in the library catalog.
   
5. When you install the toolbar in firefox, there will be a logo at the bottom of the browser.  In there, will be an option to hide the toolbar.  Even if you do this, you can still use the features 2-4, but you will need the toolbar displayed to do feature #1.

Internet Explorer users
There is a version of the libx toolbar above that works in IE7. It can be downloaded here: http://libx.org/editions/72/D4/72D431A9/libx-72D431A9.exe

IE and Firefox users

Another option is a toolbar made through a service called Conduit.

The toolbar will allow you to do do a web search with Google by default (although with a lot more ads before you get to the real result screen). Next to that search box is a drop down window that allows you to run your search in in the University of Maryland System Catalog or through several of Langsdale's most popular databases. The toolbar also has direct links to several commonly used pages within the Langsdale Library and the University of Baltimore websites.

Try Our Toolbar

toolbar powered by Conduit

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