Help yourself
Browser Extensions and Toolbars for Library Research
The following are some Firefox extensions, toolbars, or features that are useful for library research. If you don't have it yet, you can download Firefox from Mozilla.com. Not all of these tools are fully supported by the MIT Libraries, but they are listed here as possible tools that you might find useful.
LibX MIT
LibX is a Firefox toolbar that allows you to quickly search the Barton catalog, Vera, Google Scholar, the SFX FullText Finder and other search tools. It also embeds links in Amazon and other sites that link a specific title to the MIT Libraries copy in our research databases or the Barton catalog.
Firefox "smart keywords"
Smart keywords are an easy way to search web sites from the location bar of Firefox. With smart keywords, you can type "imdb alfred hitchcock" in your location bar and be taken directly to the result in the Internet Movie Database.
Using Firefox, you can set up smart keywords to work with our Vera database and our Barton catalog. See Firefox smart keywords explained, for instructions. These are great if you are someone who wants to avoid extra mouse clicks.
BookBurro
BookBurro is designed to help find the lowest prices at online bookstores. It can also be used to search library catalogs according to your preferences. When it senses your are looking at a page that contains a book (such as Amazon), it will overlay a small panel which when opened lists prices at online bookstores and whether the book is available at your library. Set your preferences in BookBurro to include "Wordcat", with the zip code of 02139, and that will enable links to MIT Libraries Barton catalog via Worldcat.
Search engines in the Firefox toolbar
A few popular search engines are installed by default in the search bar in the upper-right corner of Firefox. There are many more you can add, using the list of additional search engines. You may also create your own sets of favorite sites to search, using Rollyo, and add your saved Rollyo sets as a search in the Firefox toolbar. You can also search for journals in Vera with the Firefox search bar, to help you find online journals owned by MIT.
Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives where you do your work — in Firefox itself. See the guide on Zotero Bibliographic Software at MIT for more info. Watch this screencast for a quick demo.
Currently Zotero works with most of the research databases in the MIT Libraries that are listed in Vera. It also works with the Barton catalog on individual titles.
When you are viewing a list of results in Barton, Zotero doesn't display the full titles until after you select them (a small inconvenience caused by the way our catalog screens are designed... we hope to fix that someday!)
The MIT Libraries also provide limited support and instruction sessions for two related tools for managing and citing your sources: Endnote and RefWorks. These are not related to Firefox, but are stand-alone applications available to the MIT community. For more information on choosing the software that best matches your research needs, see the Overview of Bibliographic Software at MIT.
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This page was last updated on
02/19/08
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