Some Australian library catalogue widgets

Some Australian university libraries have written code for catalogue widgets and gadgets. The widgets and gadgets can be loaded to a blog or an iGoogle page. You can find them by doing a search within iGoogle, then go to Add Stuff, Search for gadgets, then search for "libraries". I did find some Australian library catalogue widgets including Deakin and UWA. The other top spot to look for widgets is the Widget Box . See my previous post What are widgets for more info or widgets and gadgets.

What are widgets?

Widgets are small programs that run on your desktop, or within your website or blog. They constantly pull content from a third party, so that you don’t need to regularly visit that website. For libraries they are a great way of introducing library content, such as a catalogue search box, into our users’ web space.

Some examples of widgets on my blog are the Flickr badge of photos and LibraryThing random books from my library down the side bar.

New library search widgets are being written for social sites such as Facebook.

There’s a podcast of “widget fanatic” Niall Kennedy talking about how widgets are revolutionising the web on the Media Report ABC Radio National website