We are pleased to announce that Libero now has a simple and flexible way of defining OpenURL statements that can be targeted to any OpenURL target link resolver.
Insight is also in discussions with TDNet for the purposes of providing our customers a simple to manage and cost effective OpenURL resolver solution.
Library users traditionally search information in an Abstract and Index “A&I” database and then find their citation in the library collection. Reference linking, or the ability to get from a citation to the referred-to article, is taking advantage of new technology to provide immediate access electronically to the citation. In current terminology of reference linking, “Source” is where one would find the citation and “Target” is where one could read the full text.
An OpenURL framework allows building context-sensitive links based on the information contained in the library’s specific knowledge base of holdings and references.
Whilst Libero already contains some support for OpenURL source syntax, the Libero OpenURL Gateway is built to leverage the benefits available from third parties in areas that are resource intensive and costly for individual libraries to maintain.
The OpenURL source will be managed in Libero the following way – A parameter is provided to store the location of the Link Resolver. The GMD Parameters will have a new option “Electronic Content via OpenURL”. Material whose GMD is marked for Electronic Content will display a link in the WebOPAC to access the additional information. The Libero OpenURL gateway will assemble the necessary OpenURL command structure based on the Parameters in order to retrieve the electronic material.
TDNet’s OpenURL Resolver is a software package running on TDNet’s server that provides context-sensitive reference links to any individual user among TDNet’s customers.
TOUResolver is NISO-compliant and links from reference databases to full text of both OpenURL and non-OpenURL target sources. If full text is not available, TOUResolver will link to document delivery, pay per view, ILL, library catalog(s), or search the web for this article.
TOUResolver is based on complete data of TDNet’s journals holdings management or the Knowledge Base. It contains all relevant information of each library including links, linking rules, proxy redirects, passwords for certain providers, and local database redirects.
TDNet’s multi-disciplinary Knowledge Base currently comprises of over 100,000 unique titles. TDNet updates the holdings database weekly and relieves the library staff of data maintenance and managing a local server. The library may optionally use TDNet’s interface for journals management.
Many libraries want to take advantage of the recent advances in OpenURL linking technology in order to access full text from an article citation. The library often discovers that implementing a link resolver system is a frustrating process for a number of reasons:
- The library would have to complete the labor-intensive task of creating a knowledge base.
- Installing and customizing the link resolver software may require the services of a database specialist or systems programmer
- There are additional hardware costs associated with adding a link resolver server
- The link resolver’s inability to link to full text sources that are not OpenURL enabled
The libero OpenURL Gateway provides a totally flexible and cost effective solution and will work with any NISO compliant Link Resolver, plus allows libraries to define their own link resolver with their unique syntax.