Farewell, OpenURL bits
I'm sorry to say that this blog has outlived its usefulness (to me), so I won't be updating it any longer. If anyone would like to take over, please contact me and I'll set you up. How? Come on, you're librarians, you figure it out. :)
Why OpenURL?
"
Why OpenURL?"
D-Lib MagazineMay 2006Ann Apps and Ross MacIntyre
Abstract
The improvement of access to scholarly literature caused by electronic journal publishing quickly led to the wish for seamless linking to referenced articles. This article looks at the evolution of linking technologies with a particular focus on OpenURL, now a NISO standard. The implications for stakeholders in the supply chain are explored, including publishers, intermediaries, libraries and readers. The benefits, expectations and business drivers are examined. The article also highlights some novel, existing and potential future, uses, including increased user-empowerment and possibilities beyond referencing traditional bibliographic material.
Ingenta TOC alerts
Information on adding openURL links or creating RSS feeds for Tables of Contents alerting (InTouch) from IngentaConnect can be found
here.
{BTW, ingenta's links are inexcusably complicated to copy and paste, particularly for subscribers--like me--who wish to share information with non-subscribers--like you, Gentle Blog Reader. grr.}
Update: Kirsty Meddings, Product Development Manager for IngentaConnect, was kind enough to send me a link to a web page that links to detailed instructions on how to create links within IngentaConnect, including how to construct openURLs that link to articles. It doesn't, imho, address the problem that I refer to above, where URLs are rewritten to contain the name of the subscribing library, but it's a great reference for creating links to journals and articles. Thanks, Kirsty.
ICPSR members...
Can fill out
this form to begin implementation of OpenURL links in ICPSR. I don't yet know what this looks like (as I just filled out the form myself).
SFX @ Galileo
Galileo, the state-wide virtual library of Georgia, is conducting a
massive upgrade that includes
EZProxy,
SFX,
Metalib and
WebFeat (yes, two federated search products). Information about the SFX installation is
here.
SFX info from Georgia State U
Georgia State University Library Acquisitions Department maintains a
page on their SFX service, which they call "Find It." It includes a
FAQ, two
Flash tutorials, instructions for
creating and important MARC records [DOC] from SFX into their Voyager catalog, and
use statistics [XLS].
Paper on linking from Melvyl (CDL)
The
California Digital Library published the
results of focus groups [PDF] with
UC public services librarians on linking to online resources from their shared catalog,
Melvyl. Currently, libraries assign a Persistent Identifier to each resource, which resides in the
MARC record's
856 field. The upshot is that librarians feel it's important to link to their
SFX menu (UC eLinks) from the 856 instead of directly to the resource.
See also the entire
Evaluation and Assessment reports page for usability and other studies relative to the UC eLinks project.
The California Digital Library's OpenURL Metadata Requirements
"Explains the information that vendors need to send to the CDL SFX server." [
PDF]
Technical difficulties...
I went to add an item to this blog the other day and discovered that it had disappeared from my Blogger dashboard, and that the URL was no longer valid. I sent an email to blogger tech support but got no help there (you get what you pay for, I guess). Meanwhile, I'll be rebuilding the blog as I have time from
a copy cached by Google, viewable, of course, until Google indexes this copy. Stay tuned...
CrossRef resolver
The
CrossRef OpenURL resolver might come in handy soon, as we examine the CrossRef links that appear for our holdings.
OCOinS
Still wrapping my head around
OpenURL ContextObject in SPAN; sounds like it might have real potential. This specification would allow authors to embed bibliographic citation metadata into HTML. From the site:
Open Access, public domain, and pay-per-use publishers typically do not have "subscribers" and have difficulty discovering a user's institutional affiliation which is needed to make an OpenURL. Embedded metadata can be used by client-side software to add links to non-subscription based content. This method of providing OpenURL links to users by combining embedded metadata with client side link activation has been called "latent OpenURL".
Very cool.
Wikipedia speaks
Of course, there's a
Wikipedia entry for
OpenURL. IMHO, it's a bit sparse.
Ingenta Customized Gateway Admin Guide
This doesn't really have anything to do with OpenURL, but it's a useful, hard-to-find item:
Gateway Administration Module [PDF]
Two Recent Articles
"
Keeping Pace with OpenURL: a Perspective," by Carol H. Wu, appears in vol 47, no 1/2 of the
Serials Librarian (2004). In it, Wu gives a brief overview of OpenURL and discusses in detail the implementation of
Innovative Interfaces, Inc's OpenURL solution,
WebBridge. She concludes that while OpenURL has been invaluable in improving the research process, their particular experience was hampered by lack of staff time and commitment. (They should have used
Article Linker!!)
"
Assessment of Full-text Sources Used by Serials Management Systems, OpenURL Link Resolvers, and Imported E-Journal Marc Records," by Xiaotian Chen is a fairly scathing indictment of the data provided by vendors to these important serials resources. Still the biggest problem with OpenURL context-sensitive linking, the vendor data is often inaccurate, old, or just plain wrong. This article appears in vol 28, number 6 (2004) of
Online Information Review.
Cybertour Presentation Posted
I have posted the OpenURL Cybertour that I did at
CiL 2005. You can download the
slides (PDF), the
slides with notes (PDF), or the
full PowerPoint presentation.
Presentations are also available from the
CiL 2005 site.
Articles about or referring to SFX
ExLibris maintains a
web page linking to various articles about SFX.
Try SFX
"SFX it" with ExLibris'
demo SFX site.
Documents on Linking Syntax
If you are setting up your own resolver that doesn't already have
ProQuest configured, you'll find
this page on creating links into ProQuest very useful.
See also
Linking into WilsonWeb,
Linking into IngentaConnect (cached by Google),
HLAS Online as a Source for OpenURLs, and the Google search for "
openurl link syntax."
