Lean Library

hghakoefmnkhamdhenpbogkeopjlkpoa

A library-approved tool to unlock access to academic papers.

Latest reviews

• (2025-02-11) Kasia: Lean Library is incredibly useful for our students and researchers at UHI, especially those studying off-campus. It makes accessing library resources much easier and saves a lot of time. The Google Scholar integration and Assist messages work really well and having Live Chat built right into the extension means students can get help exactly when they need it. I definitely recommend this to anyone who needs to use library resources regularly, whether on or off campus.
• (2025-01-17) HSA Bib: Good tool to get notified when an scientific article or ebook is available through campus licences or when an Open Access version is available. If threre is no e-version available, interlibrary loan is offered.
• (2024-11-19) Marie D.: Our university students, faculty, and staff have given us (KSU Libraries) positive feedback on Lean Library. We have noticed our e-resources usage increase as well.
• (2024-11-16) Pj Purchase: Lean Library is an excellent tool and has enhanced the research library experience for our students. Its integration into our Library and the easy extension download provides our user with a powerful time-saver research tool. We highly recommend it to our students and researchers looking to streamline their workflow and quickly connect to the valuable content in our library's collection.
• (2024-10-29) India Grant: Fantastic tool, super helpful for finding papers- I wish the university signposted this better!
• (2024-10-24) Диана Ермилова: Lean Library is a must-have tool for any student or researcher who frequently uses academic resources online. It saves time, increases access to materials, and ensures you're getting the most out of your library’s services
• (2024-10-24) Daan: Lean Library has been an absolute game-changer for me! As a student, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), accessing academic resources was never easier. Especially, if I compare it to my Bachelor's when I didn't have this extension. Lean Library has literally saved me countless hours of frustration by connecting me to scholarly articles, e-books, and journals that I needed for my essays, papers, and exam prep. I really appreciated the fact that the VU provides this service to its students!
• (2024-09-24) Marc van Peski: The plugin itself works quite well. The only issue I recently experience is that for instance YouTube is very slow and crashes often when the plugin is active. The browser uses a lot of memory as well then. I ckecked this behaviour with Chrome and Firefox on Windows and Mac. It happens in all situations. So now I have to inactivate the plugin and make it only active when I need it for library access.
• (2024-09-12) Mike McWay: Works well to integrate with university library but every time it updates I have to annoyingly re-disable integrations that I do not want on. 5 stars if they ever fix this problem.
• (2024-09-12) Toon Holman: It's a great tool for integrating our university library with the ever expanding plethora of ways to access articles and it really helps me do my job. As a downside though, it recently started bugging out Qualtrics where it trying to retrieve an article from the editing pane would then hide the entire page, making Qualtrics unusable. As I'm sure this tool is mostly used by academics, many of whom also use Qualtrics, I would love to see this fixed.
• (2024-08-27) Huw Sandaver: Lean Library is a fantastic tool for serendipitous discovery of library resources and for enhancing the library experience in general. With it's integration with Google Scholar and other academic sites, its a great time saver and accessibility tool that I would recommend any student or researcher who wants to add an additional asset to their research workflow.
• (2024-07-30) Chris Yates: The LEAN Library browser extension is an invaluable tool for staff, researchers and students. Its ability to provide seamless access to academic resources, coupled with its user-friendly interface and broad compatibility, makes it a must-have for anyone involved in scholarly research.
• (2024-07-26) Nije Eleven: Great extension to help me find my library content if available, just click the link popup. So convenient!
• (2024-07-22) Jenny McNally: Lean Library is a great extension which helps our users get to library content more easily. We get positive feedback from our users and from library staff. Personally I find it really handy for getting access to articles etc and it cuts out lots of clicks!
• (2024-07-19) Marcel Broekarts: The Lean Library extension is an essential tool for any researcher or student. This handy browser extension simplifies and speeds up access to academic resources via the university library. With a single click, you can access scholarly articles and e-books.
• (2024-07-16) Veerle Kerstens: Lean Library is a handy tool that allows our library to easily give access to the licensed e-resources of the institution, on every website and from every location. When Lean Library is installed, the extension detects whether you have access to the the content you encounter or not and simplifies the process of getting access to e-resources off-campus. A pop-pup hands you all necessary information where needed. For KU Leuven users, more information on this tool is available at: https://bib.kuleuven.be/english/collections-access-borrowing/access-to-e-resources/lean-library/leanlibrary. Show less
• (2024-07-12) Sarah Stalder: For many of our licensed products, customers aren’t aware that the content is available to them because the university library purchased and prepared it The Lean Library browser extension makes this transparent and gives the University Library greater visibility. If a researcher is not logged in to the university network, a helpful pop-up message appears indicating that content is available by logging in. If Lean Library can find an Open Access version for a resource that isn’t available in full text in the library, the pop-up links to the Open Access version. The assist messages can also be used to provide helpful research aids or other information. Lean Library is a very helpful browser extension for finding and providing access to resources, increasing the visibility of the university library and providing helpful information to researchers.
• (2024-07-02) Celsky Tatel: Very helpful tool to discover the library e-resources as well as ease of access to our databases, additional features for citation is also a good aspect of the tool. We ar hoping to increase usage of online resources via Lean Library Access.
• (2024-07-02) John Dixon: Easy to use and to get the search results including the library resources and freely accessible materials.
• (2024-06-30) Allison Carroll: I work in an academic library, providing access to online journals and eBooks. This browser tool has made things so much easier for our students to find and access our online content. With Lean Library, they are able to carry out their research online, wherever they want and the tool will let them know where they have access to content as part of our university subscriptions, or if there is an Open Access version freely available elsewhere. It also helps them get logged in and remain authenticated as they move from platform to platform, because the tool already knows what institution they are part of. It is a great way for us to support our users at point of need by also being able to provide pop-up messages with extra help and training when they are using particular resources or databases. We readily promote the use of this tool to our users.
• (2024-05-14) Mo G: As a recent graduate with a Master's in Civil Engineering from TU Delft, specializing in Structural Engineering, Lean Library has proven to be an invaluable resource in my academic journey. While pursuing my degree, I often found myself immersed in extensive research, particularly for my dissertation. Lean Library emerged as the perfect companion, guiding me to pertinent journal articles essential for my studies.
• (2024-04-30) Alexia Clemons: One of the best resources I have come across. I recommend to all of my friends.
• (2024-04-28) Paul Devlin: As an IT student in the Open University this is one of the best resources I have ever came across. I have been quite literally been able to find information on nearly any topic I search for. I recommend if you havent used this yet to amaze yourself and search for anything you want to read up on. Well done OU for teaming up with such an incredible library resource you have well and truly done your students a great service and have given them the quality they desire and deserve!!
• (2024-03-20) Yuqiao Deng: Lean Library helped with my academic journey massively! As a first year university student, I used to struggle with accessing articles and resources online as lots of them caps me at only the abstract and references. After downloading I have lots of essays every term, and this tool helps me to access full text articles for free! I wish I knew this earlier... I was able to use more articles in my essay and helped me to achieve a better grade.
• (2024-02-26) Amy Arnold: I work for the NHS and this saves me money as it directs me to freely available medical papers rather than paywalled ones.
• (2024-02-19) Mike B: Greetings, I'm not able to get in at all.. It tells me that I am successfully logged in, but it does not get redirected to the library. Spent hours figuring it out and still unsuccessful.
• (2024-01-31) Simon Andreas: In principle it works really well, but it clashes with Mendeley. When I login to Scopus using my University account, Lean Library is conflicting with that account as well. This prevents me from importing references to Mendeley from Scopus and consequently I have to pause the Lean Library extension.
• (2023-09-30) Who Cares: It tells me I have access to an article, and when I click, it takes me back to the paywall article. When I try to log in through lean open access to read the article, I have the option, but what is my login? I cannot for the life of me find anywhere where I created or can view or even create an account or log in. I've sent notifications to both my possible email addresses and received nothing.
• (2023-09-30) Who Cares: It tells me I have access to an article, and when I click, it takes me back to the paywall article. When I try to log in through lean open access to read the article, I have the option, but what is my login? I cannot for the life of me find anywhere where I created or can view or even create an account or log in. I've sent notifications to both my possible email addresses and received nothing.
• (2023-09-20) Swati Jain: It keeps refreshing every 1 second even when I know I have access to the article. I have re-installed it and will update if the problem persists.
• (2023-09-20) Swati Jain: It keeps refreshing every 1 second even when I know I have access to the article. I have re-installed it and will update if the problem persists.
• (2023-07-30) Farran: Hi there, This was useful for a bit (although it often redirects me back to the same article?? And redirects me to an article when I'm already able to access the one that I'm currently viewing???) However A few days ago, it started interfering with the Google Translate website. Just now I went through all my extensions, disabling them one by one. I can confirm that this extension is the problem. In Translate, when I am typing, some of the letters don't pass through to the input box. From a bit of testing, it appears that something is causing the input box to lose input focus, approximately at 1Hz. Please check this out! I have no idea why an extension such as this would be doing such a thing with the input focus. Very strange. And, naturally, I cannot use it because Translate is a core part of my daily life. Thanks for this extension all the same, it is a useful concept. Judging by the other reviews, it seems that the code is not written well, cleanly, and/or it is badly designed because the kind of bugs people are mentioning just don't really align with a piece of software that is simply meant to provide access to academic papers! So, please go back and refactor the code, ensure that it isn't doing unnecessary functions, whatever whatever. I notice that the last update was on 25th July, so being 5 days ago, that would coincide with the beginning of this bug.
• (2023-07-30) Farran: Hi there, This was useful for a bit (although it often redirects me back to the same article?? And redirects me to an article when I'm already able to access the one that I'm currently viewing???) However A few days ago, it started interfering with the Google Translate website. Just now I went through all my extensions, disabling them one by one. I can confirm that this extension is the problem. In Translate, when I am typing, some of the letters don't pass through to the input box. From a bit of testing, it appears that something is causing the input box to lose input focus, approximately at 1Hz. Please check this out! I have no idea why an extension such as this would be doing such a thing with the input focus. Very strange. And, naturally, I cannot use it because Translate is a core part of my daily life. Thanks for this extension all the same, it is a useful concept. Judging by the other reviews, it seems that the code is not written well, cleanly, and/or it is badly designed because the kind of bugs people are mentioning just don't really align with a piece of software that is simply meant to provide access to academic papers! So, please go back and refactor the code, ensure that it isn't doing unnecessary functions, whatever whatever. I notice that the last update was on 25th July, so being 5 days ago, that would coincide with the beginning of this bug.
• (2023-06-28) James H: I am not sure what happened, but there must have been an update or something, as now there are just too many click and options to choose from. And when searching online odd search results keep popping up on my screen. All very confusing.
• (2023-06-28) James H: I am not sure what happened, but there must have been an update or something, as now there are just too many click and options to choose from. And when searching online odd search results keep popping up on my screen. All very confusing.
• (2023-06-15) Mike K: It used to be really annoying and refresh every page every second. But since a week or so (when I reinstalled it) it has been performing great.
• (2023-06-15) Mike K: It used to be really annoying and refresh every page every second. But since a week or so (when I reinstalled it) it has been performing great.
• (2023-06-14) Vinee Purohit: Cannot access it when I need it. Will show up when I dont 'talk to a librarian'. Previous version was 100,000 fold better.
• (2023-06-14) Vinee Purohit: Cannot access it when I need it. Will show up when I dont 'talk to a librarian'. Previous version was 100,000 fold better.
• (2023-02-14) Oscar Hill: Strange and frustrating bug where this application keeps refreshing my page/switching me back and forth between pdfs. It might be that it interacts badly with Zotero, in which case I know which I'm keeping!
• (2023-02-14) Oscar Hill: Strange and frustrating bug where this application keeps refreshing my page/switching me back and forth between pdfs. It might be that it interacts badly with Zotero, in which case I know which I'm keeping!
• (2022-08-04) Cees Jol: Occasionally uses nearly 100% GPU for lengthy periods. M1 Max, Monterey 12.5
• (2022-08-04) Cees Jol: Occasionally uses nearly 100% GPU for lengthy periods. M1 Max, Monterey 12.5
• (2022-04-17) Daniel Korchinski: The pop-up and redirect are often mistimed or useless. For example, when browsing wikipedia on "Maxwell's equations" I don't need a message saying that "full text alternatives exist" with an option to access a textbook on Clifford algebras. Some redirects or log-ins are useless. For example, I have to disable the extension to access "https://authors.aps.org/" without being kicked into a redirect loop when trying to submit a paper for publication! I don't need a proxy to access the paper submission site. A similar issue (minus the redirect loop) occurs when reading open-access or free access articles: I don't need to be logged in to access these, so the redirect / log-in procedure is just a time waste. Finally, there are times when I arrive at a page I SHOULD have access to, and the extension sits there like a useless lump and does nothing, e.g. go to physical review E, click on the first interesting looking paywalled article, click the "pdf" option, and I'm told I don't have access.
• (2022-04-17) Daniel Korchinski: The pop-up and redirect are often mistimed or useless. For example, when browsing wikipedia on "Maxwell's equations" I don't need a message saying that "full text alternatives exist" with an option to access a textbook on Clifford algebras. Some redirects or log-ins are useless. For example, I have to disable the extension to access "https://authors.aps.org/" without being kicked into a redirect loop when trying to submit a paper for publication! I don't need a proxy to access the paper submission site. A similar issue (minus the redirect loop) occurs when reading open-access or free access articles: I don't need to be logged in to access these, so the redirect / log-in procedure is just a time waste. Finally, there are times when I arrive at a page I SHOULD have access to, and the extension sits there like a useless lump and does nothing, e.g. go to physical review E, click on the first interesting looking paywalled article, click the "pdf" option, and I'm told I don't have access.
• (2022-01-20) Sage Blodgett: If it worked it would be amazing... but it doesn't. Don't waste your time nor storage space on this extention
• (2022-01-20) Sage Blodgett: If it worked it would be amazing... but it doesn't. Don't waste your time nor storage space on this extention
• (2021-12-22) Gertrude: The library I work for is in the process of setting this up. It's looking good so far, and I think it will be very useful for students who are not on campus, helping them get access to library resources.
• (2021-12-22) Gertrude: The library I work for is in the process of setting this up. It's looking good so far, and I think it will be very useful for students who are not on campus, helping them get access to library resources.
• (2021-12-18) Kevin Zhou: On OSX, randomly causes the whole Chrome window to become a blank screen every hour or so -- impossible to work with it turned on.