The LibX toolbar is an indispensable tool in any researcher’s
toolkit. If you haven’t yet heard of
LibX, it’s an amazing grant-funded, open-source project from Annette Bailey
(digital assets librarian) and Godmar Back (assistant professor in CS) of
Virginia Tech University. Our LibX toolbar links you back to Murphy Library
resources and librarians whether you are browsing books at Amazon.com, doing
research in Google, or reading the New York Times online.
LibX Main Features:
- Toolbar (quickly search the library catalog, Google Scholar, or FindIt! by title, author, keyword, etc.);
- Context (right-click) menu (highlight text from any web page or PDF and right-click for a list of options);
- Reload any page through the library's proxy server (EZProxy);
- Access to our FindIt! services;
- Embedded links (available on sites like Amazon.com, Wikipedia, etc.).
To illustrate the utility of this toolbar here’s a quick
story: Sitting in a coffee shop in downtown La Crosse, you find a great JSTOR
article through a Google search. You
know that Murphy Library licenses JSTOR content, but JSTOR is asking you to pay
for content. With LibX installed, you simply right-click on the article web
page, select “re-load page via EZProxy,” authenticate, and then read the
article. In cases in which Murphy Library doesn’t have access, the toolbar will
redirect users to the FindIt! menu from which they can easily and quickly
request the article via ILLiad (interlibrary loan/document delivery service).
Submitted by Jen Holman, Murphy Library
