We love libraries, and we love that they do provide convenient online tools for us to find the books that they have on the shelves (physically or virtually). However, we also realize that libraries are not always top of mind when we’re out on the web, and we can stumble upon books all over the place. The extension’s goal is to make it convenient to see what your library has when you are visiting one of our supported sites and not just searching their catalog - when you follow a recommendation link (often, they’ll lead to Amazon or Goodreads), or are utilizing these same sites and their fantastic recommendation engines!

We have a searchable list of supported libraries that you can use to find out if we support your local library. If you library isn’t on the list, please send us a message and we’ll see if we can add it. In most cases, we can get your library added within a few days.

New library requests go through our contact form and are usually reviewed within a few business days. If your library uses a catalog system we already support, we can often add it quickly; some catalog systems take more investigation. We’ll follow up once it’s added, or if we run into a snag with your library’s specific setup - there’s no need to check back in unless it’s been a couple of weeks with no word.

At this time, we support results from a specific set of digital catalog providers - popular ones like Overdrive/Libby and Hoopla, plus several others we keep adding to. Rather than list them all here (a list that goes out of date every time we add a new one), see our help section for an up-to-date setup guide for each supported provider. If your library’s digital collection isn’t there, let us know and we’ll take a look at adding it.

We renamed it in the Add Library list to its full official name, “The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled,” to make it easier to identify. It’s still fully searchable by “NLS” or “BARD” if you’d rather type the shorter name - the results are identical either way.

We pull availability directly from your library’s digital collection provider (Libby/Overdrive, Hoopla, and the rest) at the moment you view the page - the same information you’d see if you searched the provider’s site yourself. When that doesn’t match what you actually find there, it’s usually because the provider’s own listing changed formats or availability moments after we checked, though occasionally it’s a display bug on our end. If you spot one that seems consistently wrong, let us know which book and library, and we’ll take a look.

At this time, we only support results from a select set of catalog systems. In some cases, library systems do offer an Overdrive powered digital collection, and we’ve enabled the option to at least get those results.

Most catalog errors happen because your library’s website changed, moved, or is temporarily blocking automated requests - not because something’s broken in the extension itself. If you keep seeing the same error for the same library, let us know with the library name, and we’ll check whether it’s a known issue or something new. If a fix is already underway, we’ll let you know rather than needing you to keep reporting it.

This is a one-time notice that shows up when we change how the extension talks to that particular catalog behind the scenes - usually because the library switched systems or we improved how we read their results. There’s nothing you need to do; it’s just letting you know your results for that library should be working the same as always (or better).

No - some library catalogs use Cloudflare or similar bot-protection that blocks all automated tools, including ours, from reading the page. See our Cloudflare and Bot Challenges page for the current list of affected catalogs and what you can do about it (asking your library to allow read-only tools like ours often helps).

Start by confirming the extension is still enabled in your browser’s extensions page, and that you’re on one of our supported sites. If it’s enabled and the site is supported but nothing shows up, look for an error message in the results box - that tells us exactly what’s wrong and helps us fix it faster than “it’s not working” alone. If there’s no error and nothing appears at all, try removing and re-adding the extension before writing in; if that doesn’t help, let us know what you’re seeing.

Yes, the extension can show results from multiple library systems! You can add as many libraries as you like on the configuration page

Although it’s possible that your library doesn’t have a copy, it’s also possible you’ve discovered a bug in the extension, and we’d love to get it fixed right away. Send us a message with the name of the library and a few example books where you’re seeing the problem. There’s also a chance that your library has changed their catalog recently, and we haven’t noticed, in which case we’ll fix it as soon as you let us know about it!

Click the × in the corner of the floating results box to hide it for that tab. It stays hidden as you keep browsing and navigating within that tab, but it’s specific to that one tab (not the site as a whole), and it’s forgotten once you close the tab - reopen the page in a new tab and the results box will be back. To bring it back sooner, without closing the tab, click the Library Extension icon in your toolbar. This is especially handy on sites like Amazon/Prime Video, where the box can end up sitting over the video player.

Click the Library Extension icon in your browser’s toolbar. That restores the results box in the current tab immediately - no need to reload the page or close and reopen the tab.

We depend on the results that your library’s catalog returns, similar to when you search on their site yourself. Sometimes the results returned aren’t very good. If you do encounter a particularly poor match, let us know and we’ll see if we can improve our ability to look for a match in those results

We pull digital results from Overdrive’s catalog - the same catalog that powers the Libby app - and sometimes their search results don’t return anything that matches the title well. This applies whether your library links out to the classic Overdrive site or to Libby (see our guide on using Libby); either way, the underlying search results are the same. We’re working on improving how we filter these listings, but for now we show all of the similar titles rather than risk hiding one that would have matched.

Send us the old and new catalog URLs and we’ll update it on our end. This happens fairly often when a library switches systems, and it’s usually a quick fix once we know about it.

Yes - we’re always looking to expand to new sites where people discover books. Send us the site name and we’ll evaluate it; sites with a consistent way of identifying a book’s title, author, and ISBN on the page are the easiest for us to add. You can check our current list of supported sites to see what we already cover.

Unfortunately, the Library Extension is not available for any iOS device (including iPhones and iPads). Apple currently controls all browsers on their devices (even ‘Chrome’ and ‘Firefox’ on iOS are just forms of Safari). We continue to watch for future opportunities to support users on these platforms.

Unfortunately, The Library Extension is not supported on Android. Mozilla Firefox is current working on adding more Add Ons to their Android version of Firefox and we are hopeful that we will be able to provide an offering in the future.

As a historical note, the Library Extension was available on Firefox for Android prior to September 2020. Mozilla updated their support for Add Ons at that time and limited the list of Add Ons to a smaller list of supported and approved Add Ons. Please see Mozilla’s Add-ons Blog entry for September 2, 2020 (https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/02/update-on-extension-support-in-the-new-firefox-for-android/) for more details.

The Library Extension currently only runs within your browser on desktop and laptop systems, such as Chrome on Windows, MacOS, and Linux, Firefox on Windows, MacOS, and Linux, and Microsoft Edge on Windows and MacOS.

Yes - there’s a dedicated build of the Library Extension published to the Microsoft Edge Add-ons store. Install it from there rather than from the Chrome Web Store; while Edge and Chrome share the same underlying engine, we publish and update the Edge version separately, so getting it from the right store means you get updates promptly.

The Library Extension is provided for free to users, but users are welcome to support us by making a contribution toward ongoing development and maintenance efforts. In addition, we are working on some new features that will be provided as ‘premium’ upgrades. We are dedicated to keeping all of the existing features free for all users.

We take user privacy seriously and, unlike other tools, we do not track your browsing behavior. The Extension was designed to perform searches directly at your library, rather than through a middle-man, in part as a way of ensure user privacy. We do track some anonymous metrics surrounding the general use of the extension (for example, what versions of the extension are installed and which libraries are in use) as a way of ensuring we keep popular libraries working. If you have questions, we are more than happy to answer them if you contact us.

This is a common question and a very good one. Note that the library extension does not track your browsing history or store any information about the pages you visit or anything you enter on those pages. To understand the permission and how and why it’s used, let’s look at how browser permissions work and each portion of the permission above.

The permissions given to a browser extension come from the configuration that the extension provides to the browser. This configuration indicates the capabilities it requires in order to function. These permissions are a fixed set of values at the time that the extension is installed. In the case of the Library Extension, we request a permission that allows us to run code within the pages that you are browsing (called ‘content scripts’) that is defined as ‘Read and change all your data on the websites you visit’.

The content scripts we run need to be able to read all of your data on the page in order to find the search terms that will be used to try and find matches at your library. This information is limited to trying to determine the type of item (book, CD, etc), the title, the author, and any ISBN numbers, as defined by the various pages we run on.

The change all of your data permission is required so that we can present the results on the same page. It’s a strongly worded permission, and rightfully so, as anything on the page is open to modification by the script. However, we add one special section on the page within which we displayed the library search results for users.

Finally, the permission allows for the above on all the websites you visit. The extension does run the content script for every page, where it checks to see if it is on one of the following sites, and only then will it actually do the work described above:

• abebooks.com
• amazon.ca
• amazon.co.uk
• amazon.com
• amazon.com.au
• amazon.de
• amazon.es
• amazon.in
• amazon.sg
• apps.npr.org
• arbookfind.co.uk
• arbookfind.com
• audible.ca
• audible.co.uk
• audible.com
• audible.com.au
• audible.de
• audiobooks.com
• audiobooksnow.com
• barnesandnoble.com
• betterworldbooks.com
• biblio.com
• blackwells.co.uk
• bookbub.com
• bookclubs.com
• bookdigits.com
• booko.com.au
• bookoutlet.ca
• bookoutlet.com
• bookshop.org
• booktopia.com.au
• chirpbooks.com
• ctpub.com
• downpour.com
• easons.com
• everand.com
• fantasticfiction.com
• goodreads.com
• google.com
• google.com.sg
• hardcover.app
• hive.co.uk
• indigo.ca
• kirkusreviews.com
• kobo.com
• learnnatively.com
• libraryextension.com (this site)
• librarything.com
• libro.fm
• logos.com
• pagebound.co
• pangobooks.com
• penguinrandomhouse.com
• penworthy.com
• perlego.com
• readaroundtheworldchallenge.com
• romance.io
• smashwords.com
• thepaintedporch.com
• thestorygraph.com
• theworks.co.uk
• thriftbooks.com
• waterstones.co.uk
• waterstones.com
• whsmith.co.uk
• wordery.com

If the page you are on is not one of the above pages, the extension stops running. There is no tracking nor any other messages passed back regarding the pages that you are visiting.

The reason for running on all sites is that although the extension supports only the sites listed above today, we do occasionally add support for a new site or feature. Unfortunately, the permissions model provided by the browser is a ‘set once’ model when the extension is installed, and cannot be changed incrementally. Adding support for any new site would be a permissions change that would disable the extension for most existing users.

If browsers were to provide a more user-selective way toward choosing which sites can be enabled or disabled, we would certainly look at taking advantage of that mechanism for limiting where the extension is permitted to run.

You can find the version of Library Extension installed in your browser’s extensions page:

• Chrome - visit chrome://extensions; the version number is shown directly under the Library Extension’s name.
• Firefox - visit about:addons, click Extensions in the sidebar, then click on Library Extension to see its version.
• Edge - visit edge://extensions; the version number is shown on the Library Extension’s card.

If you’re not on the latest version, see our guide to updating the extension for steps to force an update on each browser.

If you have already installed the extension, it should update itself automatically the next time you restart your browser. If you’d like to force an immediate update instead:

• Chrome - visit chrome://extensions, toggle on Developer mode in the upper corner of the page, then click the Update button that appears.

  

• Firefox - visit about:addons, click Extensions, then use the gear icon next to “Manage Your Extensions” and choose Check for Updates.

• Edge - visit edge://extensions, toggle on Developer mode in the bottom-left corner, then click the Update button that appears.

See our full guide to updating the extension for step-by-step details on each browser.

The easiest way to find the configuration screen in any browser is to right-click the Library Extension icon in your toolbar and choose Options (some browsers may show this as Manage Extension → Options). In Chrome specifically, you can also visit the extension’s address directly: chrome-extension://chkgcmmjoejpekoegkedcpifgfhpjmec/config.html - that exact address is Chrome-only, since each browser assigns the extension its own ID.

Email us and we’ll be happy to get back to you with a response as quickly as we can!