Project Play

The Awesome Highlighter is a free web tool that lets you highlight text on a web page — just as if you used a neon bright pen — and then creates a new link to your highlighted page.  You can then share the link to your customized page with patrons and colleagues, or even link to it from your own web page or blog.  The page is stored on their web server, and you don’t need to know HTML to create your tailor-made page!

To see an example of what it looks like, here’s a page I highlighted to send to a customer who has questions about using OverDrive: http://awurl.com/jZnvAmsfZ

To create your highlighted web page…

1. Paste the URL of the original page in the box on the Awesome Highlighter website
2. When the page is displayed there, your mouse pointer will turn into a highlighter pen
3. Use your mouse to mark any text on the page, and you’ll see that text highlighted
4. Change highlighting colors if you’d like
5. Add some “sticky notes” to the page if you’d like
6. Click the “done” button
7. The new link to your highlighted web page is generated for you, so anyone you share this link with will see your customized version of the page

You can also add the Awesome Highlighter to your web browser by installing either the Firefox add-on or bookmarklet.

If you create a free account, all the pages you’ve highlighted will be listed and available for re-editing any time.

Ya just know this tool is library-friendly, because the Awesome Highlighter’s web page says “Save time for the reader”, which you’ll probably recognize as also being #4 on Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science.

I’ve used this handy tool when answering questions via email or QuestionPoint.  If you use it too, please leave a comment on this blog post. 

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