Library Web Chic

I got some really good comments in response to my post about Google Scholar and OpenURL resolvers. Ross and Tate both had helpful things to say. Tate pointed out that the OpenURL button appears regardless of if the library has fulltext holdings or not. It just appears more prominiently if there is fulltext available. Ross pointed out that “WAG the Dog/Monkey/Menagerie is perfectly happy to find print items from multiple libraries for the user”. This is really cool. It would be great if it could refer users to multiple OpenURL resolvers as well (maybe it does already?!). I also wholeheartedly agree with Ross’s comment that “the user is much more concerned about fulltext instant gratification”. My point was that OpenURL is a great time saving tool for other things. For example, getting a complete citation into the ILL system if the users chooses to request an item via ILL.

I’ve learned alot from these responses and am even more excited about getting things up and running as soon as possible. I really wish that I could find the time to play with WAG the Dog/Monkey/Menagerie. It seems an interesting and enticing prospect. In the meantime, I’ve been working on migrating our SFX instance to version 3 so we can get links in Google Scholar up. As part of this I’ve been turning on a number of new targets and creating targets for some unique content that we get via SUNYConnect. I’ve improved the target that links to the SUNY Press titles that are in the SUNY instance of DSpace as well as developing a target that allows us to link to a collection of electronic reference books from Gale. The process really isn’t so bad and I’ve had few problems thus far. I would like to comment on a few things I see as dramatic improvements in version 3. First and foremost the ability to generate display logic rules in the web-based admin is great. I worked on this in version 2, editting the display_logic file in Unix and never got my rules just right. A few clicks in the new interface and things are working the way they should. What an improvement! Second, I like the fact that you can group services together. One thing I wish was in the web admin is the ability to sort targets of the same service type. This still has to be done by editing a file in Unix. I can deal with Unix but I think in terms of librarian user friendliness this is something that should be in the web admin. Lastly, I can’t wait to try out the built-in functionality that Tate mentions by which libraries can enable Google Scholar to display OpenURL links to SFX and institutions’ electronic library holdings are made available to Google Scholar so that the Google Scholar search results will clearly indicate when electronic full text is available.