I cannot emphasise how useful the following tip is. Everybody should know about this feature, available in both Firefox and Opera! I was shocked recently at how many people at work either have never heard of this, or simply do not use it.

Librarians spend a great deal of time searching across the same web services day by day. Assigning a keyword for these searches cuts out the need to visit the site you need in the first instance, streamlining many of your tasks throughout the day.

Do the following (shown here in Firefox, very similar in Opera):

1. Visit a website you search all the time. My example is Amazon.co.uk, as I spend a lot of time here looking for books.

2. Within the search box of the website, right hand click and select ‘Add a keyword for this search’ (below).

screenshotamazon

3. A box entitled ‘Add Bookmark’ now appears. As I am using Amazon I have put ‘Amazon’ as the name, followed by a keyword of ‘a’. The keyword can be as little or as long as you like. However by keeping it short you will be able to make quick use of this service, something which become clear shortly.

keywordscreenshot

4. Now you can search amazon by simply visiting your address bar, typing ‘a’ followed by your Amazon search.

addressscreenshot

This can be done for almost all search functions on the web. I have it set-up for Google (blogs/images), Amazon, eBay, ebuyer, incredibly useful for searching quickly across sites.

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