6 Firefox Browser Extensions Every Librarian Needs

For users of Google Chrome, which has more than half of the browser market, we posted 6 Chrome Browser Extensions Every Librarian Needs and then 6 More Chrome Browser Extensions Every Librarian Needs. But there are many Mozilla Firefox users who prefer their browser or who have recently abandoned Google due to their recent questionable privacy decisions and political censorship.

Like Chrome, Firefox has a robust browser add-ons and extensions selection.  Browser extensions are plugins or small applications that add functionality to your browser.  Sometimes they work in the background (like Grammarly, below) but usually they work when you click on a small icon that gets added to the browser’s toolbar.

Mozilla has an add-ons website where you can find and install extensions, most of them are free.

Here are six Firefox browser extensions every librarian needs.

EZProxy Redirect Foxified

Have you ever reached an online article but couldn’t access it because you didn’t get there via your discovery service or EZproxy service? The EZProxy Redirect browser extension reloads the current webpage while prepending your EZproxy URL to it. If your library subscribes to the article or ebook, you will then have access to the full text.

Before using the browser extension, right-click on the button and select Manage Extension to go to the EZProxy Redirect Foxified Options page. Find your library in the drop-down list, or if it isn’t listed, enter your library’s EZproxy URL and click the Save button.

Add the EZProxy Redirect Foxified browser extension.

Google Scholar Button

Even if you don’t normally use Google Scholar to locate journal articles, the extension has some very useful features for the researcher.   Using the Google Scholar Button extension’s browser button, users can search for the full-text version of a highlighted article title, immediately switch from Google to Google Scholar search results, and create article citations in several styles.

Add the Google Scholar Button browser extension.

Grammarly for Firefox

We all have spelling and grammar checking in Microsoft Word and other favorite text editing applications. But if you do any writing on the Web, you often find you don’t have these features.  The Grammarly for Firefox browser extension adds spelling, grammar, and word choice checking to your online writing in applications such as LibAnswers, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, online forms, and many others. Check out other free products from Grammarly.

Add the Grammarly for Firefox browser extension.

LastPass Password Manager

One of the most popular free password management applications is LastPass. Save website passwords and have LastPass fill in your login information for you. LastPass can also generate passwords for you. Plus, your passwords are available across all your devices.

Add the LastPass Password Manager browser extension.

Unpaywall

Unpaywall allows you to legally “[r]ead paywalled research papers for free” from open access databases and repositories. When Unpaywall recognizes the page as a research article, a small color-coded tab is added on the right side of the browser window. A grey tab means no free version is available, but a green tab provides a link to an open access version of the article. On the options page, you can choose to have the tab display green for Green OA, gold for Gold OA, and blue for no-license articles.

Add the Unpaywall browser extension.

Wayback Machine

In the course of research or other browsing of the Internet, you probably have tried to access webpages that no longer exist. If you wished you had one-click access to an archived version of the missing webpage, you’re now in luck. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine created a browser extension for Firefox that allows you to do just that. When you reach a missing page (the dreaded 404 error page), the Wayback Machine Firefox extension gives you a link to the latest archived version of that page (if available).

Add the Wayback Machine browser extension.