Ballad in Plain E

How cool is this? The University of Winnipeg has a library toolbar, from which you can search for materials in various media, initiate live help, and quickly access search tips and library tutorials. I know it’s not the first library to offer one, but it’s the first I’ve ever come across while using a library’s site. While I couldn’t get it running for Firefox (they’ve not updated it for 2.0), it’s working fine in IE6.

I generally don’t use toolbars at all – I don’t like how much space they take up and prefer to visit an actual website to do my searching – but judging by how much time my friend Aaron spends at the UBC library website for his coursework, I can see how this would be a huge timesaver for students.

Actually, the whole U of Winnipeg library site is pretty sweet. They’ve got a Flickr widget featuring random slides from their “Library Tour” slideshow, CBC headlines via RSS, and they’re using a blog to publish news, events, and new titles.

Serious props to the U of W library team!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Library Stuff, el internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.