The Library and Information Professional’s Guide to Plug‐ins and other Web Browser Tools: Selection, Installation, Troubleshooting

Citation

Calvert, P. (2003), "The Library and Information Professional’s Guide to Plug‐ins and other Web Browser Tools: Selection, Installation, Troubleshooting", The Electronic Library, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 169-170. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470310470552

It goes without saying that librarians and other information managers need to be comfortable with new information and communication technologies in order to provide a good service to their customers. More and more information is available on the Internet and the library profession needs to know how to access and disseminate this information. Whether this is done directly through answering customer questions at a reference desk or via a virtual reference service, or indirectly by links on a library Web site, or OPAC, the librarian must know how to get the best from Internet plug‐ins such as Shockwave, Flash, iPIX, MrSID, and so on. This book is a relatively short but admirably well crafted introduction to plug‐ins for Web browsers.

There are seven chapters after the brief introduction. “Utility tools” covers the Adobe Acrobat reader and Microsoft’s Office viewers. The point made here is that even though these might not be necessary on home computers, hence some fairly IT literate people will not know too much about using these tools, that in a library environment in which the original file must not be altered, such viewers become essential tools on public access workstations. The second major chapter is on image tools, and here there are some surprises as the chosen plug‐ins are AlternaTIFF (for viewing TIFF files via a browser), the iPIX viewer (for 3D files), MrSID (usually used for maps), and the Whip/Volo View Express (for CAD).

The third section covers more familiar plug‐ins: QuickTime, Shockwave, RealOne, the Windows Media Player, and WinAMP. Four of these are competitors in the multimedia player’s field, whereas Shockwave is only used for playing Macromedia files. There is not much to distinguish the others and that is why the industry power of Microsoft is helping the Media Player to establish itself, and if you have not downloaded it yet then you will need to very soon.

The chapter on math and science tools includes unfamiliar plug‐ins; indeed, Chime/RasMol/Cn3D and LiveMath are not likely to be used in some libraries. The last chapter on the tools is concerned with “accessibility tools” such as the magnifying glass. These tools, though not glamorous, are extremely important for libraries wishing/needing to provide equal access to electronic resources for all possible customers.

Each of the five chapters on the tools follows a similar pattern, which greatly helps comprehension. Each tool is examined under the following headings: purpose, system requirements, IE and Netscape compatibility, pros and cons, examples, finding and installing, troubleshooting, creating files, and library uses. Often we are presented with books that claim to be “the librarian’s guide to … ” which in reality turn out to have little to do with libraries at all. This book is very much an exception to that rule. The authors clearly know what they are talking about when it comes to using the Internet and browser plug‐ins in libraries. There are many examples here of resources that I had not used before – perhaps because I had not installed the necessary plug‐ins, but after reading this book and checking out the examples, I realise how much I was missing.

The last two chapters are on staff tools for librarians (e.g. the Google Toolbar), and on strategies for managing plug‐ins. Highly recommended as a staff resource in all libraries of all types.