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Accelerating Library Access with LibX |
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 Dr. Godmar Back, assistant professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, and Mrs. Annette Bailey, digital assets librarian at University Libraries, collaborated to create LibX, an innovative tool that is indispensable to researchers, teachers and students alike.
LibX is an open-source Firefox extension that allows the user to retrieve library resources cited in research work simply by selecting and clicking on the title. This eliminates – or, at least, greatly reduces – the unnecessary copying of titles in search engines, and encourages access to library resources instead of web-only material. In a recent study to be published in the journal The Serials Librarian, they found that LibX has an average success rate of over 81% of correctly retrieving randomly chosen citations in journals selected from several areas.
In addition, the Virginia Tech LibX edition lets students search the library’s catalog, Addison, as well as other resources such as Virginia Tech’s Electronic Thesis and Dissertation database.
Since LibX was launched in 2005, 46 academic and public libraries have used adapted versions of the tool, and 83 libraries are considering adoption.
Bailey and Back have won the 2007 LITA/Brett Butler Entrepreneurship Award, sponsored by the Library and Information Technology Association, a division of the American Library Association.
“We were amazed by the enthusiasm for LibX from the library community,with librarians at more than 46 other libraries supporting their own editions. We are very honored by this award," Dr. Back said.
They are recipients of a 2006 Institute of Museum and Library Sciences National Leadership Grant of $165,364 to continue the development of LibX, including building a version for Internet Explorer. |
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