For a while now I've been playing around with Firefox extensions. The idea I had was to highlight some text (say a book title from a footnote in an online article) and see if our library had the item. My first attempt at this was a couple of years ago when I wrote a couple of bookmarklets to do this.

When I started using very useful extensions for Firefox, I decided this was a great opportunity to learn some new technology and create something useful. Last year I released a first version of the LibrarySearch extension as a test to see if I could do it. Today, I'm releasing a newer version that is based on the very popular Define Word extension.

After installing the extension (there's installation code with the link on the right, though you'll need to allow the site to install software; you can also download the extension and load it from the File menu), when you select text in the browser and right-click, a new context menu appears (Look up selection) that allows you to select which library/resource you would like to pass your selected text to search. This then opens a new tab with the launched search.

Knowing this isn't for everyone, you can modify these defaults in extension's options (Tools > Extensions). You can choose to open the search in the same window, a new window, or a new tab (default). You may also add, edit, modify any of the default search engines to your liking. If you ever mess it up, you can then click on the restore defaults button and start over.