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MLibrary Labs at the Blog for Library Technology

ArticlesPlus Browser Bookmarklet

Ever visited a web page and wanted to find more information, from the academic or popular press, on the same subject? This bookmarklet will automatically search ArticlesPlus for the title of the page you are visiting. (You can edit the query if you like, to remove or add other keywords.) What It Does Say, for example, you're on the Wikipedia page for President Franklin Roosevelt. You want to quickly find scholarly articles about him. Click the bookmarklet and you're given a box to edit the search query: Click "OK" and you're taken to an ArticlesPlus search results page for that same query: Where to Get It The ArticlesPlus bookmarklet is on the University Library's MLibrary Labs site. Credit This bookmarklet is based on a similar one developed by Barbara Arnett and Valerie Forrestal at the Stevens Institute of Technology's S.C. Williams Library....

Proxy Server Bookmarklet -- Updated for iPad

The Proxy Server Bookmarklet (originally released in September 2009, and described in the post titled Proxy Server Bookmarklet for iPhone) has been updated to include instructions for using it on an iPad, as well as on an iPod Touch or iPhone. Installation is now a bit simpler than it was since the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch now allow copying and pasting. The Proxy Server Bookmarklet allows you to take any web page you are viewing on your handheld device and redirect it through the library's proxy server. You might want to do this if you have found an article through a web search engine but cannot access the full text because you are off campus. Simply tapping this bookmarklet will give you a chance to log in and return to the article so you can get the full text. See the MLibrary Proxy This Bookmarklet for iPhone and iPad for installation instructions. There are also instructions for configuring the popular Papers application for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch for use with the library proxy server....

PictureIt Rare Book Reader Code

by Eric Maslowski If you’ve ever wanted to view and share some of the most rare and beautiful items in the Library’s collection, the PictureIt Rare Book Reader is your tool. The PictureIt site allows you to “turn the pages” of digitized rare materials on the web. Check out the PictureIt tool. The PictureIt project is available in two forms: as a configurable self-contained tool, and as a Flex project with full source code. The configurable tool allows you to add your own pages, customize the interface, and even add your own acknowledgements under a Creative Commons License. This version is easy to use and a great way to get started with the PictureIt tool. The tool can be downloaded from: http://www.lib.umich.edu/pictureit/distro/PictureIt_v1.0_bin.zip. If you find yourself needing more functionality than what is currently exposed through the configuration files, the full source code is available under the Apache License at the link below. The associated Flex project...

PictureIt Rare Book Reader

We bring old books to life. See them again for the first time. by Catherine Soehner It is my pleasure to announce the public debut of PictureIt Rare Book Reader (http://www.lib.umich.edu/pictureit). A collaborative effort between several Library units, the product is now available for shared use after 18 months in development. PictureIt is a web-based animation program that gives users the sensation of turning the pages of digitized rare materials that would be otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to view or obtain. Volume 1 of John James Audubon’s Birds of America was selected as the inaugural PictureIt book for a few reasons. Foremost, the eight volume set has special meaning as the first purchase for the Library by the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan. As well, the University of Pittsburgh had already digitized all volumes of the Birds of America set and was willing to share the images with us. And finally, the illustrated plates of this set were intricately completed, making t...

Proxy Server Bookmarklet for iPhone

There are now instructions for using the library's Proxy Server Bookmarklet with an iPhone. The original Proxy Server Bookmarklet allows you to save a bookmark into your browser that will take any web page and send it through the library's proxy server. If you click from Google Scholar or some other site into a journal or database to which your affiliation with the University of Michigan Library gives you access, but which doesn't recognize you as being from U-M, you can use the bookmark to reload the web page through a library server, giving you access. Now, this same bookmark is available for iPhone users. See the MLibrary Proxy This Bookmarklet for iPhone for details and instructions (it takes one additional step to set up the bookmark on your iPhone, compared with desktop- or laptop-based browsers)....

Just Go

Search is a hard problem. I take it for granted because I have things like Google and Lucene available to me. But it is a difficult problem, and it's made more difficult when you're not actually allowed to go around and index everything you want to search. Furthermore this difficulty is compounded when you want to repeat this search in multiple locations, and then combine the results. Now, performing multiple searches is necessary when you want to provide easy searching over information indexed in multiple places. But when the number of indexes increases so does the wait time. To try to make this easier and more bearable, I've been working on a Database Finder, an MLibrary Labs project that tries to identify indexes relevant to a search based on the keywords you supply. So far I've included indexes indexed by Search Tools and some of MLibrary's digital collections hosted by DLPS. Between the two main sources of databases, I have much more information about the databases from Search Tools. It's likely y...

MLibrary Labs Proxy Bookmarklet

The proxy bookmarklet lets you reload a web page through the U-M Library's proxy server. If the page you are visiting is one that the library has a subscription for, and you're presently off-campus, then you should get you immediate access to the resource once you've logged in with your uniqname and Kerberos password and have been verified to have a valid library account. Get the MLibrary Proxy bookmarklet...