Lean Library by TfS Extensions

2.9 Stars out of 5

Review by Lourdeau

This would be a 5-star extensions if the performance wasn't so terrible, especially on websites like youtube or facebook where it shouldn't even be active. There really should be a way to create a blacklist of websites to disable the extension. The disable switches in the popup don't work most of the time, or have weird behaviour

Developer response

posted 9 days ago

Hi Lourdeau,

Thank you for your feedback!

We are aware of the issue that some users are experiencing with the Firefox browser, and we are working on resolving it as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, there is a feature available to your library that allows them to block the extension on websites where it’s not needed. If you could kindly provide the university you attend, we can contact the library to enable this feature for you.

Alternatively, if you'd like to discuss this directly, please feel free to reach out to us at support@leanlibrary.com, and we’d be happy to assist further.

Best wishes,
Lean Library

56 reviews

Rated 2 out of 5
by Steven Crane, 3 months ago
Significantly slows down my browser, even on an M1 Max Macbook pro with 32gb of ram.
Developer response
posted 3 months ago
Hi Steven,

Thank you for your feedback regarding the performance issues you experienced. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused.

I’m happy to inform you that this issue has been resolved. If you encounter any further problems or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly at support@leanlibrary.com. We’re here to help!

Thank you for your understanding, and we appreciate your patience.

Kind regards
Lean Library
Rated 2 out of 5
by Xard, 3 months ago
I would give the feature 4 stars, though the extension itself is lacking.
It's always on without an easy 'off' switch, meaning I have to manually go into my settings to turn it off, otherwise it bogs down my browser. It will often pop-up after I've already gotten to the intended page from clicking the provided link. If I click the pop-up, it opens the exact same page, again.
Overall I still find it incredibly useful, though its implementation is wanting.
Developer response
posted 3 months ago
Hi there Xard,

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on our extension. We’re glad to hear you find the feature useful!

We understand how frustrating it can be when the extension behaves unexpectedly and we would firstly like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

I’m happy to let you know that we’ve addressed these issues and improved the performance of the extension.

If you have any further concerns or suggestions, please feel free to reach out to us directly at support@leanlibrary.com.

Best regards,
Lean Library
Rated 2 out of 5
by Firefox user 15550996, 3 months ago
The shortcut does "work" for me, as in, it allows me to access scientific literature though my university its library.

HOWEVER, That does not mean that this extention works well, far from it...

The extention is Always Active, with no options to change this. I would much rather have it off by default and activated upon request, or be able to manage sites it works on with either a whitelist or a blacklist...

The extention often causes a lot of slowdown on different sites, and also regularly pops up the "sign in to your institution" widget when visiting sites like wikipedia... as you might have guessed, I don't need a library log in on a site which gives me its information for free :/

It does the bare minimum which it promisses to do, so I won't give it one star, but man, would I like a better extention for this.....
Developer response
posted 3 months ago
Hello,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on our extension.

There is indeed an option to pause the extension so it is not active when you do not wish for it to be. You can easily click the toggle button on the extension to turn it off when you don’t need it, allowing for a smoother browsing experience.

Additionally, we’ve resolved the issues related to browser slowdowns which you mentioned.

If you continue to experience any problems or have further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@leanlibrary.com. We’re here to help and are always looking to improve!

Best regards,
Lean Library
Rated 1 out of 5
by Carla, 4 months ago
when filling in the university I attend, it does not give any options to proceed. I want to log in with my university information, but except for filling in that I attend it I cannot do anything
Developer response
posted 3 months ago
Hi Carl\,

Thank you for reaching out and sharing your experience. I’m sorry to hear that you’re having trouble logging in with your university information.

Please reach out to our support team at support@leanlibrary.com for further assistance. They will be able to guide you through the process.

Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to resolving this issue for you!

Best regards,
Lean Library
Rated 5 out of 5
by Firefox user 16816864, 5 months ago
Rated 1 out of 5
by Firefox user 18508199, 5 months ago
This extension breaks my browser and other extensions like Mendeley Web Importer that i need for my scientific papers.
Developer response
posted 4 months ago
Hello there,

We are sorry to hear that you experienced difficulties with the extension and would like to resolve this issue for you.

Please get in touch with us at support@leanlibrary.com and let us know which institute you are with so we can investigate this further for you.

Kind regards
Lean Library
Rated 5 out of 5
by Henrik H, 7 months ago
A genial passkey that really works great! No hassles. I had forgotten it until I got a new PC and suddenly met walls for every literature search. Strongly recommended! (I rarely write reviews, but those facing you on LL are unfair according to my experience.)
Developer response
posted 7 months ago
Hello Henrik,

We greatly appreciate you taking the time to leave us such a kind review and are so glad to hear that the Lean Library extension has helped you with your literature searches.

All the best!
Lean Library
Rated 5 out of 5
by Maged Sami Ayed Sammor, 9 months ago
Rated 1 out of 5
by Firefox user 15858525, a year ago
Stuck at loading screen
Developer response
posted a year ago
Hello there, we are sorry to hear this. We would like to resolve this issue for you. If you can please get in touch with us at support@leanlibrary.com and let us know which institute are you with as well as which site you are stuck at loading screen, then we can investigate this further for you.
Rated 1 out of 5
by Helen Ostovich, a year ago
When it works it's great, but for me as a professor emerita trying to access remote materials is almost impossible. Most of the time my login and password are not accepted. I would appreciate it if it worked, but each time I try to use it, I have to download it again. This is not good tool, if it wastes so much time.
Rated 1 out of 5
by DB, a year ago
Rated 1 out of 5
by None, a year ago
If only it worked properly. Half the times it doesn't want to load and needs me to re-boot it manually. Other times it doesn't let me choose my primary institution by automatically choosing another institution...
Developer response
posted a year ago
Hello there, thanks for your feedback. Sorry to hear about the issues. It looks like the issue you encountered is related to the on-campus IP address. Could you kindly reach out to support@leanlibrary.com so we can look into this for you?
Rated 4 out of 5
by Firefox user 14394827, a year ago
Rated 2 out of 5
by Luke, a year ago
Buggy. Recently started forcing infinite redirect loops on IEEE and Taylor & Francis.
Developer response
posted a year ago
Hello Luke, thanks for your feedback. We are sorry to hear that there was indefinite loop on these sites. The settings are managed by your library, so if you could kindly get in touch with us at support@leanlibrary.com, we will then be able to obtain more information and investigate this for you.

Best wishes
Lean Library team
Rated 1 out of 5
by Florine W. Dekker, a year ago
The latest update has broken a lot of non-academic websites for me. With this add-on enabled, the website Cryptpad.fr does not work at all anymore, and visual glitches have appeared on other websites including my own personal website. I have tested this in a completely fresh Firefox install: No add-ons, and websites work perfectly, then I install Lean Library, and the websites break.
Developer response
posted a year ago
Hello Florine, thanks for the feedback and we are sorry to hear about the issue. To resolve this, it will be very helpful if you could get in touch with us at support@leanlibrary.com, so we can get some extra information for investigation.

Best wishes
Lean Library team
Rated 1 out of 5
by HuiBuh, 2 years ago
Please do not add fonts.bunny.net to every website.
A extension which adds a popup does not need to add a font!!!!
Developer response
posted 2 years ago
Hello, We appreciate your feedback. 

We are using Bunny Fonts as it is a privacy focussed and GDPR compliant provider. The reason we use fonts in our extension is to allow librarians to select their libraries preferred font type to provide a customised experience to their patrons.

However, if there are any concern and feedback on Bunny Fonts, we would really appreciate if you could get in touch with us at support@leanlibrary.com so we can look into this further for you.

Best
Lean Library team
Rated 1 out of 5
by Elvey, 2 years ago
Oh, hell no! Let rapacious publishers have access to my browsing history and data for all web sites? Anyone using this would be at great risk of a lawsuit by SAGE if they also use a site such as Sci-Hub.
Developer response
posted 2 years ago
Hi there, we are sorry to hear of your concerns. We take data privacy very seriously, and work hard to ensure our service does not infringe on your right to privacy. You can read more in our policy here: https://www.leanlibrary.com/data-privacy/

With some of our core features (eBooks alternatives, article alternatives, highlight and search), our extension will require a few details to provide a seamless service. The extension scrapes the page for academic material IDs (ISBN and DOI) and based on this information, redirects you to a full text location. We do not collect any personal data (including browsing history) and we use highly advanced regular expressions (defined search pattern) when scraping pages to make sure our extension only picks up DOIs and ISBNs.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with us at support@leanlibrary.com and we will be assist you further.
Rated 4 out of 5
by Lonelywolf21, 3 years ago
Great user experience. The only thing I find annoying is that there is a pop-up each time I visit an article. Please make an option to disable that.
Developer response
posted 3 years ago
Hello there, thanks very much for your feedback. If you would like to disable a certain pop-up on a specific site, you could disable the pop-up on the Advanced User setting. More information here: https://intercom.help/lean-library/en/articles/5668269-how-do-i-use-the-advanced-lean-library-extension-settings

If you have any questions on how to disable these pop-ups, please get in touch at support@leanlibrary.com so we can assist you further.

Best wishes
Clare
Rated 1 out of 5
by Firefox user 17389517, 3 years ago
Absolute rubbish. My university uses this and there's nothing but problems, sluggish connections, redirects not happening properly. Essentially unusable (both this add-on and the shitty university's system). How poor does this have to be before we can report it for abuse?
Developer response
posted 3 years ago
Hello, your feedback is important to us, and we are sorry to hear that you are having trouble using the extension.

In order to investigate this a bit more, we will need some more details on the issues you encountered. This is because some of the redirection settings could be set up by your university library, however, to avoid unwanted redirection, you could use our Advanced Settings to customise it to your preference.

Here is some more information: https://intercom.help/lean-library/en/articles/5668269-how-do-i-use-the-advanced-lean-library-extension-settings

It would also be very useful if you could get in touch with us at support@leanlibrary.com and let us know the issues you encountered, we can then resolve them for you.

Best wishes
Clare
Rated 4 out of 5
by Nicolien, 3 years ago
Rated 2 out of 5
by Mees, 3 years ago
does what it should do, but uses a lot of resources which drains battery life.
Developer response
posted 3 years ago
Hello there

Thanks for your feedback and we are sorry to hear this.

In order to investigate this a bit more, we will need some more details as we don’t know of any issues at present that would cause a heavier consume battery life. Please contact us at support@leanlibrary.com and we would be very happy to look into this and help resolve it for you.

In the meantime, here are some of the minimum requirements you need to have in your computer to experience the best performance of the Lean Library extension:

1. Please make sure to update your extension to the latest available version for your preferred browser.
2. Update your browser to the latest available version.
3. Update the operating system of your computer to at least Windows 7 or higher, macOS Big Sur 11 or higher.
4. We recommend using a computer with Intel processer series 5 or higher for the best performances of the Lean Library extension.
5. Having a consistent internet connection is required for the extension to work properly.
6. The number of tabs you have opened within the browser can also affect the speed of the extension as the other tabs can utilise the CPU, RAM and Internet bandwidth as well. Therefore we recommend you not to open too many tabs at the same time for the best Lean Library experience.

For more details, please visit: https://intercom.help/lean-library/en/articles/5587891-minimal-requirements-for-the-lean-library-extension

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes
Clare
Rated 1 out of 5
by Firefox user 17099903, 3 years ago
Works, but makes all pages load significantly slower.
Developer response
posted 3 years ago
Hello there

Thanks for your feedback and we are sorry to hear this.

In order to investigate this a bit more, we will need some more details as we don’t know of any issues at present that would slow down Google Chrome. Please contact us at support@leanlibrary.com and we would be very happy to look into this and help resolve it for you.

In the meantime, here are some of the minimum requirements you need to have in your computer to experience the best performance of the Lean Library extension:

1. Please make sure to update your extension to the latest available version for your preferred browser.
2. Update your browser to the latest available version.
3. Update the operating system of your computer to at least Windows 7 or higher, macOS Big Sur 11 or higher.
4. We recommend using a computer with Intel processer series 5 or higher for the best performances of the Lean Library extension.
5. Having a consistent internet connection is required for the extension to work properly.
6. The number of tabs you have opened within the browser can also affect the speed of the extension as the other tabs can utilise the CPU, RAM and Internet bandwidth as well. Therefore we recommend you not to open too many tabs at the same time for the best Lean Library experience.

For more details, please visit: https://intercom.help/lean-library/en/articles/5587891-minimal-requirements-for-the-lean-library-extension

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes
Clare
Rated 1 out of 5
by GV, 3 years ago
When used as an extension, it increases the RAM usage of firefox 3 to 4 times than without it. My computer starts making loud noises and seems to start struggle.
Developer response
posted 3 years ago
Hello GV

Thanks for your feedback and we are sorry to hear this.

In order to investigate this a bit more, we will need some more details as we don’t know of any issues at present that would slow down Google Chrome. Please contact us at support@leanlibrary.com and we would be very happy to look into this and help resolve it for you.

In the meantime, here are some of the minimum requirements you need to have in your computer to experience the best performance of the Lean Library extension:

1. Please make sure to update your extension to the latest available version for your preferred browser.
2. Update your browser to the latest available version.
3. Update the operating system of your computer to at least Windows 7 or higher, macOS Big Sur 11 or higher.
4. We recommend using a computer with Intel processer series 5 or higher for the best performances of the Lean Library extension.
5. Having a consistent internet connection is required for the extension to work properly.
6. The number of tabs you have opened within the browser can also affect the speed of the extension as the other tabs can utilise the CPU, RAM and Internet bandwidth as well. Therefore we recommend you not to open too many tabs at the same time for the best Lean Library experience.

For more details, please visit: https://intercom.help/lean-library/en/articles/5587891-minimal-requirements-for-the-lean-library-extension

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes
Clare
Rated 2 out of 5
by Firefox user 17067935, 3 years ago