web browser digital reference
mozilla firefox has an incredibly simple toolbar interface for custom search engine plug-ins. there are literally hundreds of plug-ins contributed by the mozilla community for all variety of special purpose search engines.
i use a handful of web reference tools. these are the plug-ins i’ve collected so far:
(if i was a reference librarian, i’d be drooling right now)
update: i just created two three search plug-ins for UNC’s library catalog, campus directory, and google in the unc.edu domain. want ’em? unzip uncsearchplugins.zip and save the files in Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins and restart Firefox.
update: i should mention that the campus directory plugin only queries last names. i’m told AIS is planning to implement full name searching in the near future.
update: now you can install the unc search plugins instantly!
ha! i just downloaded firefox because one of my co-workers – seeing mozilla on my desktop asked if it was firefox. which, of course, meant that i had to get that instead. thanks for pointing out at least one reason why it’s great. i’m still trying to figure it out.
I use the search plugin for Scirus, which is especially good for searches for scientific and medical literature.
The UNC Campus Directory only is good for last name first; should have told us that. i couldn’t figure out why i didn’t exist for the longest.
yeah. sorry. i’ve got a ticket into AIS to have them do fullname searching. but the plugin only searches on the last name field.