Gale Virtual Reference Library Search Widget

The publisher Gale blogged about creating "search widgets" for the Gale Virtual Reference Library collection. It's easy to set up, and it does foreground the availability of reference books. Unfortunately, it is limited to Gale products, and it really just looks like one more search box on the screen. Still, I like that it does run a search across the six Gale reference books we hold. Try it out below...

UML Virtual Reference Collection

Making a book from a collection of articles

The MobileRead Wiki rolled out an interesting feature today. You can mark pages on their wiki, so that the pages get converted to pdf. As you add more pages, they append to the end of the pdf file, and they're even paginated. When you're finished, you can download the single pdf to your ebook reader. Or, you can order a printed, bound copy of whatever you've selected.

I'd like to see something like this in place for library resources. Some material wouldn't be available due to licensing, of course. Still, it would be nice to be able to package up several documents at once, and then save them as a single file. That way, patrons could have a pdf document named after, say, a course and create their own collection.