The Athens toolbar has been around for quite a while now - the most recent version is almost one year old. It's a good idea in principle, but missing a few key features that could make it a vital addon.
When not logged into Athens the toolbar has only one option, which is to take you straight to the MyAthens login screen. Once logged in you have a drop down list of all your Athens resources, a log out button and a few account management options. Ok, these are relatively useful, but not really anything that couldn't be achieved with del.icio.us and some judicious tagging. Far better are the features that it doesn't have yet. Add in an easy way to switch between Athens accounts for those us of us with more than one that cover different areas and it's instantly more useful. How about a search box? I realise cross searching might still be a step too far, but a search engine box like Firefox's standard one which allows you to specify Westlaw or LexisNexis would save me literally seconds every day. Over the course of a year the savings could be as much as a couple of minutes. Until then I fear the toolbar might be taking up too much screen real estate to justify its existence.
