Lewis

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Lewis Clarks Locally Built OpenURL Resolver

• Mark Dahl
• Watzek Library
• Lewis Clark College
• dahl_at_lclark.edu
• http//www.lclark.edu/dahl/presentations/

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Three major points

• How OpenURLs work
• Building a resolver at Lewis Clark
• Future directions for OpenURLs at Lewis Clark
  and elsewhere

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What is an OpenURL?

• a system for transporting citation data from one
  web page to another
• a transportable metadata format to acquire
  services

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OpenURL flow
Fulltext article
OpenURL or proprietary link
Article citation in database or index
OpenURL
OpenURL resolver
OpenURL
ILL form
OpenURL
??????
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Where do we find OpenURLs?
Online databases Indexes (other places, too)
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Where do they lead?
A resolver (article example)
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Where do they lead?
A resolver (book example)
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Where do they lead?
A resolver, article-not found
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Where to from the resolver?
Full text
Printed copy
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Full text article
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Anatomy of an OpenURL
Article Title Violence, Terror, and War Author
David A BellJournal French Historical
StudiesISSN 0016-1071Volume 24 Issue 4
Pages 549-557Date 2001
http//library.lclark.edu/dynamic/serials/resolver
.php? aufirstDavid20A aulastBell atitleViole
nce2C20Terror2C20and20War issn0016-1071 ti
tleFrench20Historical20Studies date2001 volu
me24 issue4 pages549-557
resolver
Parameters/ metadata
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Creating a resolver at LC

• LC has a journal title database
• Built with
• Serials Solutions data representing aggregator
  electronic titles (Ebsco, Lexis-Nexis, JSTOR)
• Data from III integrated library system
• Uses PostgreSQL database and PHP scripting
  language

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Journal title database
Serials solutions data
III data
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Journal title database

• Linking to journal title level when possible for
  electronic sources
• Show location and holdings detail for print
  holdings AND link to record in catalog

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Adding a resolver to journal title db

• Take an OpenURL as input
• Check journal title database for matches to
  citation represented in OpenURL
• In the case of articles, return links to
• Catalog holdings for print/microform journals
• Online journals
• Online articles (this is the hard part)
• In the case of books, return links to
• Catalog
• Orbis
• Worldcat

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Technical details

• Had to modify journal title database to include
  dates of coverage fields for journals (eg
  1980-1999)
• Wrote resolver as PHP script
• Initially, provided only journal-level linking
• Now, we provide some article-level linking

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Article level linking

• Easy with some vendors (Ebsco) that let you use
  an OpenURL to point to article (target)
• Other vendors require more complex schemes (SICI,
  proprietary URL format, etc.)
• Currently working for Ebsco, Gale, and JSTOR
• This is what you pay for when you buy a resolver

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Article level linking
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Have a look at the resolver
http//library.lclark.edu/staff/systems/openurl/re
solve_test.html
The resolver from a database
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Activating OpenURLs in databases

• A real hassle
• You need to contact every database vendor and
  find out how to do it (weve done this for about
  10 vendors)
• Vendors dont use the OpenURL standard
  consistently
• Ive seen dates represented incorrectly
• The genre field (bookitem/article) is sometimes
  misused
• Hopefully these inconsistencies will get worked
  out in the future

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What happens when you cant find an article?
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Logging into the interlibrary loan form
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Logging into the ILL form
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Requesting, step 1
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Requesting, step 2
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Interlibrary loan form
Resolver (puts citation info into PHP Session)
Submit request for article held in PHP session
data
Log in to ILL form (personal data put in PHP
Session)
Resolver (puts citation info into PHP Session)
Submit request for article held in PHP session
data
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Is it worth it do write your own resolver?

• Not that hard if you already have a relational
  database with electronic and print journal
  holdings data
• You do need programming expertise on hand
• You may be able to save some

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Advantages of the LC Solution

• Integration of print/microform holdings data from
  III system
• Unlimited ability to configure the display and
  behavior of the resolver
• Direct access to the knowledgebase
• More potential to tailor system to our needs (eg
  statistics)
• Cost savings

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Disadvantages

• Keeping up with target syntaxes can be difficult
  (can also be an issue with commercial resolvers)
• Code construction and maintenance
• Database construction and maintenance

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Future enhancements

• Statistics
• Resolver and Journal title database will log hits
  on particular journals for use in collection
  development decisions
• Citation manager
• From resolver, patron can save citation to their
  own shopping cart of citations
• They can download citations to Endnote to build
  bibliographies

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Future directions

• OpenURLs are designed for intellectual works
  books, articles, other media
• What about OpenURLs and resolvers for places,
  people, products???

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References

• Dahl, Mark. OpenURLs and Reference Linking
  Research and Practical Application in Libraries.
  OLA Quarterly 82 (Summer 2002).
  http//www.olaweb.org/quarterly/quar8-2/dahl.shtml
  .
• Dahl, Mark. BUILDING AN OpenURL Resolver in Your
  Own Workshop. Computers in Libraries 242
  (February 2004), pp. 6-11.
• NISO Committee on OpenURL standard.
  http//library.caltech.edu/openurl/default.htm
• Watzek Library at Lewis Clark College.
  http//library.lclark.edu.