A great feature of the Firefox web browser is the little search window built right into the toolbar next to the address field. It’s set to Google as a default, but you can add other common search engines or knowledge bases like Yahoo, IMDB, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, dictionaries and others – a customized reference suite right in your browser. What if you could put a card catalogue in there too? John Wohlers, of the Todd Library at Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove, Illinois has built a searchlet that effectively does this. It’s not like Google Print, where you can actually browse scanned copies of the book, but it takes a step toward integrating libraries with the web – an important move if they are to remain relevant in a world where browsers and search engines are the primary research tools.
Wohlers is also working on building library search into desktop tools. Windows users can find instructions here for putting the Todd Library catalogue into your Microsoft Office 2003 Research Pane.
(via The Shifted Librarian)