Following up on Amy Howlett’s article in the DOL News No. 139, Winter 2008(in PDF format), I have been making some changes to the toolbar, cleaning up links and adding a few others. If you would rather skip all of my blathering about the toolbar that follows, just go to http://librariesvermont.mylibrarytoolbar.com/Home/ to get a taste of some of the things on the toolbar. At the bottom of this page you will find a link for downloading the toolbar.
The free download of the toolbar is available directly at http://librariesvermont.MyLibraryToolbar.com. Choose the Firefox download or the Internet Explorer (for IE 5.0 and up), depending on your internet browser. If you need a free updated browser before downloading the toolbar, try Mozilla’s Firefox browser from http://www.mozilla.com/. Firefox is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
In addition to the functions that Amy mentioned in her article (direct links to DOL sites like the VALS webmail, the ILL search screen on Web2 & the DOL Continuing Calendar and directed searches of the DOL website, Worldcat and other sites), there are a couple of other functions you may want to check out.
The Feeds button/drop-down pulls in postings from this blog, the DOL Continuing Ed. Calendar, the VLA website. If there other feeds that you think would be useful, please suggest them and we can add them. Something that may fall into the category of a function in search of a need is the “Who is online” button. Clicking on it, brings you to an online chat space where other toolbar users who have also clicked on the button are available for conversation. I would love your feedback on whether this button might actually be useful or if it just another bright and shiny object that has caught my eye. Look for “Sheila” in this chat space if you want to try it out.
Finally, if you have downloaded the toolbar, you may want to verify that it is being updated. You can update on demand by clicking on the VT Libraries drop-down and the far left of the toolbar. The first item in the dropdown is “Refresh Toolbar” and will bring in any changes that may have been made. Also, at the bottom of this same drop-down list you will find “Toolbar Options” where you can select the Enable Automatic Updates check-box on the “Additional Settings” tab.
[...] So why are these multiple homepages so important to me of late? Well I am tracking a couple of experiments in online interaction and also trying to be more efficient in keep up with RSS feeds. My first tab is just the DOL homepage because it is easiest for me to navigated to our resources from there. The second tab is my Google Reader page with my feeds with seperate folders for professional and personal feeds. The third tab is my login to a Meebo account where I am experimenting with a MeeboMe widget that I put on the “Contact the library“ page in our online catalog. And the fourth homepage tab is another experiment with the “Who is Online” chat function embedded in the VT Libraries toolbar. [...]
[...] So why are these multiple homepages so important to me of late? Well I am tracking a couple of experiments in online interaction and also trying to be more efficient in keep up with RSS feeds. My first tab is just the DOL homepage because it is easiest for me to navigated to our resources from there. The second tab is my Google Reader page with my feeds with seperate folders for professional and personal feeds. The third tab is my login to a Meebo account where I am experimenting with a MeeboMe widget that I put on the “Contact the library“ page in our online catalog. And the fourth homepage tab is another experiment with the “Who is Online” chat function embedded in the VT Libraries toolbar. [...]