Google Labs have released a beta of the Google Deskbar. This sits in your Windows taskbar and will do google searches for you. What’s neat is that it can be easily adapted to search other resources such as a library catalogue or a federated search tool if you know the syntax.

Although it’s not unique – there are other toolbars around – notably Dave’s Quick Search Deskbar which is open source. However, I found it more difficult to configure than the Google version. I also really like the fact the Google one comes with a stripped down browser included – something that has been (I think) overlooked by many commentators.

One idea that has kicked around the SFX coomunity is an ‘OpenURL’ toolbar/deskbar to help locate full-text online from a citation. Ex Libris, the company which sells SFX has actually created one for their development team to use, but seem unwilling or unable to distribute it to SFX customers. There is also the question of whether our library users will actually be interested…