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Library 101

August 14, 2007

Search Blais From Firefox!

Want a shortcut for doing a title search in Blais?

Candace, our Blais coordinator, has created a Firefox add-on that makes it possible for you to search for titles in Blais without first having to open Blais and select the title search option.

What is the Firefox Search Bar?

This is the box at the upper-right-hand-side of the Firefox browser window that usually has a little “G” on the left hand side of it.

When you type in words in the Search Bar box and click Enter, your browser will automatically search for those words using the search engine selected and then show you the results in the browser window. For example, the “G” search will search Google. You can change the search engine by clicking on the arrow just to the right of the G, which will give you a dropdown menu that shows what search engines you have loaded. By default, Firefox comes loaded with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Answers.com, Creative Commons, and eBay. Just scroll down to change the search engine.


How do I add Candace’s cool, new Blais title search engine to my search bar?

There are quite a few steps, but they are all quick and easy—promise!

1. Open Firefox
2. In the upper right corner of the window, look for the Search Bar. This is the box just to the right of the address bar:
3. Look for the little black arrow just to the right of the “G” and click on it.
4. You will now see a drop-down list of search engines.
5. Click on (at the bottom of the list). This will open a separate window, called 6. At the bottom of this window, click on the link which will take you to the Firefox Addons: Search Engines page. Here you’ll see a group of popular search engines like IMDB and Wikipedia, which you may want to add.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and under Additional Resources, click . Here’s where you can look at the “home grown” search engine addons, like the one Candace has made.
8. In the Site Name/URL search box, type Blais and click .
9. In the center of the page, click on the link.
10. When asked if you want to add this search engine click .
11. The Blais Title Search has now been added to your Search Bar. Happy Hunting!

Posted to blais | cool search tricks by jez at 03:06 PM

February 21, 2007

Municipal Codes Online

Need a municipal code for something? Check out this site for municipalities nationwide - http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=collection_municodes

and this link for California Municipal codes - http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/calcodes.html

Posted to cool search tricks by jez at 02:48 PM

June 15, 2006

Google Announces release of new Government Search Engine

this came across the wire this morning... Google has a new government search engine. it looks to me like the new 'site' is a new front end with the same indexing behind it that Google Uncle Sam used. fine with me; i really like the layout and information options. totally customizable, too, which rocks. i like the news headlines. however, i dont like how most of the news links are straight from the white house and the military... i'd like to see a little less bias, but at least Google News offers their government news feeds. at least you can use it to keep track of what the government thinks of itself.

the weather thing is pretty cool, too. it's kinda fun being able to see if our leaders are getting rained on. : )

Posted to cool search tricks by jez at 02:58 PM

June 10, 2006

Google, the dictionary

one of my favorite Google features, Google, the Dictionary!

in the search box, type 'define:whateverwordyouwant.' any definition indexed will return in the search list. Google is also sweet enough to offer links to related phrases above the search results. here, give it a try define:integer

pretty cool, huh?


Posted to cool search tricks by jez at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2005

tiny url ~ the solution for long links!

i hate those really long links that inevitably break in emails or don't copy completely into text. here's a solution - tinyurl.com. tinyurl will take long links and create short n sweet ones that are permanent. way cool!

Posted to cool search tricks by jez at 09:55 AM

March 01, 2005

Google Uncle Sam

need government information? check out www.google.com/unclesam. it only searches domains that end in .gov, .org, .edu, & .mil. if the government has it online, google uncle sam is the way to find it!

Posted to cool search tricks by jez at 07:29 PM

February 23, 2005

Google Movie Times & Reviews

type 'define:(insert movie of choice here) for movie times and reviews.

thanks to juile for this tidbit. : )

Posted to cool search tricks by jez at 07:31 PM