It's all in the WebPaths, baby...

"From blogdex to Veen to del.icio.us to this wonderful search plug-in for IE – mahvelous!" [jenett.radio]

Give me a moment to think of a word to write other than "WOW!"

Click on the last link in Joe's post if you are a Windows + Internet Explorer user and you like searching library catalogs. While there are several pre-configured search engines available at the site, the Searchy plug-in turns out to be another pipeline into online catalogs that sits completely outside the library world. Like LibraryLookup, anyone can configure the plug-in to work with any OPAC that allows the appropriate type of search strings, and the site even provides a Plug-in Generator.

For example, I played around with SWAN's keyword search and created a registry plug-in that allows me to type searches directly into the address bar in IE. After installing it, I can now type "sk celtic music" and the results of the search in SWAN load in the browser window. In fact, I just tested "sk pirates of the caribbean" and after a few clicks I'm now the 47th hold for the DVD!

I can also configure similar searches for title, author, subject, etc. ("st" for title, "sa" for author, "ss" for subject). I think the keyword plug-in should be visible to you on the Searchy page if you scroll down to "SWAN" - give it a whirl! The installation instructions really are as simple as they sound. (Do note that this installs into the Windows registry, though, so play at your own risk.)

SWAN runs Innovative Interfaces software, so I know III catalogs will work with this. We'll have to test others. I'm no Windows expert (not even close), but theoretically a library should be able to make plug-ins pre-configured for its catalog available from its own web site, right?

Very cool!