Firefox extensions for BioMed Central and PubMed!

As if I didn't already like Firefox more than was healthy for me. Now near and dear to this librarian's heart comes two new plugins for the handy search window in Firefox. Firefox background Skip this section if you're familar with Firefox. For those of you not familar with Firefox, read on! One of the nifty features available with Firefox is a built in search box. You can grab plugins to augment this search box from several major web databases. After its installed simply select which search engine you want and do your search. If you've installed the Google Toolbar or the Yahoo toolbar then you are familar with this kind of technology. If you haven't... what are you waiting for? This make web surfing at the Reference desk far easier. My only complaint is the size of the search box in Firefox is small. However, this being said, I haven't tried too hard to figure out a way to expand it! Here are a few of my favourite search plugins:

• Internet Movie Database
• CISTI Catalogue (Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information)
• More are available from Mycroft

A very nice explanation with screen captures is available from Jason Lefkowitz's Weblog - Just Well Mixed entitled "Get the Most Out of Firefox: Adding New Search Engines to the Search Bar". Plugins BioMed Central has created a Firefox plugin to ease searching its growing database of free online biomedical journals. Yes, you heard me. Free peer reviewed journals freely (did I already mention that?) available on the web. Read more: Installing and using the BioMed Central Firefox search plugin The technogeeks at University of Toronto have created search plugins for Firefox what search PubMed! Okay, not so exciting to your average person but a heck of a lot of fun for Health Sciences Librarians. Read more: PubMed Mozilla Firefox Search These two plugins caught my eye in a posting from psih.org. Grow your own Have your favourite database and looking for a search shortcut for it? Why not try growing your own? These instructions from "Geek Notes" look simple enough. Read more: Search shortcuts in Firefox