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MLibrary Labs at the Blog for Library Technology

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...

MLibrary Labs Project Summary

MLibrary Labs is the University Library's test bed and playground. Here's a summary of all the tools that have been released since we launched it in September 2007. We use the Labs to get user feedback and real-world experience with tools that are not quite ready for prime time. We encourage you to try them out and -- this is important! -- let us know what you think of them by sending an email to mlibrary-labs@umich.edu. Library RSS Feed Browser Want to stay current on what's going on in the Library? The RSS Feed Browser gathers many of the library's RSS feeds into a single location. Browse news, events, new items, and more. Try it out! iGoogle Gadget The MLibrary Search Gadget for iGoogle puts commonly used library search tools on your personalized Google portal page. iGoogle can be customized with various "gadgets" (a gadget is a module that performs some simple tasks -- displays news headlines, the local weather, how many email messages are waiting for you, etc.). MLibrary has a gadget that let...