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Title:
The Library and Information Professional's Guide to Plug-ins and other Web Browser Tools: Selection, Installation, Troubleshooting
Review:
Being an information professional can be a bit of a schizophrenic
activity at times. On the one hand despite having been surfing the web
for nearly ten years, I still have the gnawing feeling that I have a
lot more to learn. On the other hand, having read every issue of
Internet Magazine published from cover to cover, it is easy to lapse
into a 'seen it, done it, bought the T-shirt' complacency. A book such
as this can be a very helpful wake-up call, reminding one there is
always more knowledge to be gained and often in unexpected areas. I
started off by wondering how many plug-ins the authors might have
missed but instead was surprised by the gaps in my own knowledge.
As the title makes clear, this book aims to introduce and explain the
main web browser plug-ins and surfing related tools. It is divided
into eight chapters and three appendices (not to mention the
ubiquitous index in any book for information professionals). The
software is broken down into: Utility tools such as Acrobat Reader;
Image tools such as iPIX Viewer for 3D images; Multimedia tools
including QuickTime video player; Maths and Science tools such Chime
for displaying molecular structures; Accessibility tools such as text
to speech software ReadPlease; and finally what the authors call
'Staff Tools for Librarians' which consist of Yahoo! Companion and
Google Toolbar, Mousetool and Pop-up Stopper.
Each tool is covered in a systematic way using the following
structure: Purpose; System Requirements; Pros and Cons; Examples
(screenshots); Finding and Installing; Troubleshooting; Creating
Files and Library Uses (suggesting how and why libraries might take
advantage of the technology). Although there is a danger that this
approach can become rather dry and sterile, the authors avoid this by
their use of a conversational writing style and including plenty of
their own hard won experiences.
One of my criticisms of the book is the amount of space it devotes to
multimedia tools. Over forty pages in a book of 171 pages on
Shockwave, RealOne, Quicktime, Windows Media Player and Winamp is
excessive. Especially as most readers will be pretty familiar with
most of these already. Also this is an area where change is more rapid
than elsewhere, so although the book is commendably up-to-date in most
aspects, the last three players on the above list are already on later
versions, with significant changes in some cases.
Pleased as I was to see mention of the Google Toolbar (which should be
on every information professionals browser) I was surprised at some of
the omissions. Anyone who has lost a large file during download will
no doubt have installed Go!Zilla or one of its many rivals to enable
recovery from download errors and to resume failed downloads. Other
important tools are Alexa, which provides related links and statistics
about sites as they are visited, My Favourites helps to organise and
launch IE favourites, Cookie Eater which allows you to manage cookies,
and iCapture-it which allows you to capture web pages or entire sites
for offline browsing.
The real surprise for me was mention of the free Microsoft Office
Viewers for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. These are pared-down versions
of their expensive commercial counterparts (of which I was not
previously aware) and allow surfers to view and print Office files.
The real break through here for me is Excel (as Word documents can
easily be converted into Acrobat pdf format and PowerPoint can save to
a web presentation mode), which used to present real problems. Thanks
to this book in future I will be saving my spreadsheets to the web
with a link to the Microsoft free download page.
Free Pint Reviewer:
Neil is manager of Business Information Services at Hermes Pensions
Management. He is a member of the board of the European Chapter of the
Special Libraries Association where he edits their newsletter and
managers their website at <http://www.sla-europe.org>. He is also an
occasional columnist for Information World Review.
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