An Overlooked Library Tech: Apps and Extensions

How can we encourage users to download apps and extensions?

Posted on May 14, 2025 in Blog Posts

When I write about technologies for the library community, my approach is to set up the challenge and make a use case for why this particular technology is a viable solution.

Writing about library apps and extensions (A&E) presents a unique challenge. Making a case for their value is the easy part, given their capacity to improve the experience of using library resources. How strong a case I can make for adopting these tools and utilities is another question. Here’s why.

No matter how much we believe A&E eliminate the friction our library customers experience in discovering our content, if we fail to convince them to take action to locate and install our apps and extensions, they are useless. As much as I see them as a solution to discovery barriers and efficient use of our resources, I have no surefire advice for you on how to guarantee your community members take advantage of them.

That said, what we can do is start a conversation to share our experience with A&E. Through that exchange of ideas, we might identify better strategies for encouraging their use. But first—what specific types of tech tools are we talking about?

What Are They and Where Are They Found

Anyone with a phone can tell you one sure thing about apps: there are too damn many of them. Library-specific apps, though—maybe not so much.

Library apps, generally, are intended for mobile devices, primarily phones but also tablets. While smart watches do support apps, though not extensions, I know of none that are specific to library applications.

Apps tend to fit into one of three categories:

• Product-specific apps: Public library users will be familiar with multimedia consumption apps, such as Libby,  Hoopla, and, to a lesser extent, Kanopy. They support ebooks, audiobooks, music, streaming, gaming, and more. Libraries using Meescan for circulation can offer an app that supports a fast self-checkout experience, plus borrowed content information. Spotlight News provides web-based access to numerous magazines and newspapers, but the mobile app makes for a better browsing and reading experience. Apps can also be found for free websites of interest to those who support their local library. I found Goodreads apps for both iOS and Android phones. Database products from third-party library vendors are more app-limited. While EBSCO offers a mobile app that supports searching and optimizes the ebook experience, its competitor ProQuest states that all of its databases are optimized for mobile websites and thus require no app.

• Multipurpose apps: These apps may be homegrown or purchased through a third-party vendor. They essentially provide the same web user experience on a phone or tablet by putting popular library services at one’s fingertips. The New York Public Library app is a good example of a homegrown app. This one app allows users to do common tasks such as checkouts and catalog searches. It also delivers information on programming, provides access to e-resources, and allows personal library account management. Though it offers similar types of functionality, the CapiraMobile app is an OCLC product to which libraries can subscribe and then customize. The Brooklyn Public Library is a Capira site. ExLibris offers a competing app called CampusM that offers multiple library services and resources via a single app interface.

• Institution-embedded apps: This is more common for academic libraries. While the library could work with a third-party vendor to acquire a library app, it often chooses not to. Instead, it offers library functionality similar to what multipurpose apps offer, but these functions are found within the institution’s own comprehensive mobile app. At my own institution, the library app features are subsumed by the institutional TUmobile app. Libraries served by an institutional app are typically encouraged to use it rather than spend additional resources on a third-party app.

Browser extensions, also referred to as add-ons, facilitate specialized functions while interacting with websites. They may perform actions that improve the utility or performance of software products. For example, 1Password, a password manager, would be far less useful without the browser extension. When added to a browser, the 1Password extension detects the website login page and automatically provides the username and password—a huge convenience and time-saver. There is no one exhaustive listing of all browser extensions, but there are searchable directories for both Chrome and Firefox. You can also find curated lists of popular extensions.

Extensions designed for library applications are limited. Attempting to find them in the above-mentioned directories is an exercise in frustration as “library” is just as likely used to describe a set of software development tools as it is a discovery utility. Library-focused or library-oriented extensions tend to fall into several categories:

• General book-finding/reader advisory: Popular extensions that fall into this category would be utilities such as Library Extension and Goodreads. Each facilitates or enhances the process of book discovery. Other book-finding extensions can be quite limited in their utility, for example, one that exists only to link from a book found on Amazon to the same title on Goodreads. There’s no recommended method for locating extensions in this category beyond hit-or-miss web searching, word-of-mouth posts on social media, or referral requests made in Reddit-type communities.
  
  
• Open-access discovery: Hoping to avoid paywalls that prevent access to scholarly articles, multiple extensions have popped up to help in the discovery of open content. Among the best known of these extensions is Unpaywall. Their site claims users can access more than 50 percent of research papers at no cost. Once installed, when searching for scholarly content, a green tab will appear if an article is available openly in the Unpaywall database. There are a variety of similar extensions, such as Papers, that may offer additional utilities at a price.
  
  
• Library resource-specific: Extensions in this category are typically designed by third-party library vendors or, sometimes, library staff to extend the capabilities of specific library resources and products. Examples include Third Iron’s Libkey Nomad and Sage’s Lean Library extensions. Both are designed to facilitate library content discovery from virtually any website. With the extension installed, when a library user lands on a website—Amazon or Wikipedia, for example—if a book or article citation is available through that user’s library, a pop-up notification will alert the user and allow one-click access to that specific full-text content.
  
  
• Librarian productivity: The final category of apps worth mentioning is those that enhance the tools librarians use in order to accomplish tasks or simplify them. Let’s take the example of polling software. Librarians incorporate polls into their library instruction sessions, webinars about library resources, and presentations to colleagues. Popular polling software products, such as Poll Everywhere, Slido, and Mentimeter, all offer browser extensions designed to better support poll integration into presentation software. 

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Apps and Extensions: Where the Work Comes In

In a nutshell, the challenge is marketing. How do librarians make the case for why library users should add library apps to their phones and extensions to their browsers? If we fail at this promotion task, no matter how great our A&E are, they will be useless.

The key is to drive self-motivation. We know that adding apps, on the surface, takes little time and is an easy task. Once the app is identified and a link is available, the rest takes just a few clicks. Extensions present a slightly harder sell because library customers may be less familiar with them. Even if they have existing extensions on their browser, they may not realize how they work and why they are useful. You can test this by asking a small sample of library users what browser extensions they currently use and what they do. You may find quite a few respondents know little or nothing about extensions. In addition to new awareness-building strategies, extensions may require some educational effort as well.

Consider the case of two add-ons, one a mobile app and the other an extension. Temple University Libraries offer Meescan’s self-serve checkout system and Third Iron’s LibKey Nomad to students, faculty, and staff. When adopted, they save time and increase research productivity. Meescan’s app allows library users to check out books and manage loans with their phone, enabling them to bypass the circulation desk. Adopters consistently rank their phone checkout experience a five out of five. When added to browsers, Nomad aids in the discovery of library content no matter where it’s located on websites. It spreads primarily by word of mouth. Despite the positive feedback from our current adopters, the overall rate of adoption remains below expectations.

That is an additional challenge with A&E. The vendors who create them may be unable to reliably provide accurate data on the number of people at your institution who have adopted these technologies from the app stores. Tracking extension installations is even more elusive, and so far, those data are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain from developers. One useful way to gauge adoptions is to examine usage metrics. It is possible to observe the increase in the appearance of checkouts on iOS and Android devices as opposed to the library-based tablets. Likewise, content downloads made through the LibKey Nomad extension are tracked monthly, making it possible to at least obtain tangible evidence of adoptions through increased usage leading to content discovery.

Spreading the Word

So, how can librarians encourage the adoption of library apps and extensions among the people who use library resources? The challenges of promoting the value of library research and discovery tools are well known to members of our profession.

A starting point would include traditional marketing approaches, with which we are well acquainted. These may include:

• Make blog posts highlighting the features of apps and extensions and the value they add for the efficient use of library resources.
  
• Request an informational blurb in an issue of a community or campus newsletter.
  
• Post information on digital or traditional signage throughout the library or campus.
  
• Place highlight items on the library website homepage.
  
• Create brief instructional tutorials for the website.
  
• In academic libraries, ask subject specialist librarians to promote apps and extensions to the academic units where they serve as liaisons.
  
• Conduct workshops specifically on apps and extensions or promote their benefits in other workshops.
  
• Ask colleagues in other academic support units or community offices to distribute information and encourage adoption when possible.
  
• Explore options for working with information technology to push out extensions to browsers on networked computers.
  
• Have an institutional research office or know an influential researcher? Ask them to help you promote A&E that facilitate content discovery.

All or any of these may help to spread the word. You may have other strategies that work well with your community. At my own institution, where we’ve used all of the above, word of mouth has been particularly useful in encouraging the adoption of these tools. It’s hard to identify any library service or resource that easily sells itself. Owing to users’ existing app fatigue and being subjected to constant prompts to add new tools to their devices, A&E may be in a category of their own when it comes to creative outreach and promotion. There’s a preexisting condition to overcome.

Based on my own personal experience and those of my library colleagues, when apps and extensions work well, people will bring them to the attention of their friends, fellow students, coworkers, and other community members. Make sure they do and then get the word out.

Do Apps and Extensions Worry You?

Despite the ways in which they may be helpful to the people who use our libraries and to ourselves, not every librarian may be on board with encouraging the use of apps and extensions. There is a concern that they may present a threat to the privacy of the people who use our library resources.

Apps can easily be configured to collect private data from those who have added them. That can include tracking websites and locations visited. However, most apps do allow users to customize their privacy features, for example, limiting the use of location tracking to only when the app is in use.

While extensions are less likely to collect private data, they are not without such risks. The best advice is to act carefully when presented with the option or suggestion to add a new extension. As much as possible, add them only when they’ll be used with a known resource or are available from a trusted provider. A more common problem with extensions occurs when a browser is overloaded with them, impacting the browser’s operation. If the browser crashes frequently, freezes up, or otherwise routinely malfunctions, the cause may be too many extensions in conflict with each other.

It’s Really Up to You

Whatever their perception of the value of apps and extensions for library users, there’s one thing on which librarians can likely agree: If our library customers are able to take advantage of their features, it’s up to librarians to identify and select the most useful apps and extensions and then proactively promote their advantages and availability. No one’s mobile device or web browser will ever come preloaded with library apps or extensions. Most are relatively unknown to the public. That means we need to do the challenging work of promoting them.

If you do nothing else, look into offering a robust, full-featured mobile device app, which may provide a better user experience than a mobile-responsive website. Just consider the ease of discovery and access made possible by clicking or touching an app icon compared to navigating a website on a mobile device. It truly puts the library at one’s fingertips.

Then make it as easy as possible for community members to access and download all of your available apps from third-party vendors. In time, the people who use your library will thank you for it.

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