Technology Expo, part 4

The last session I went to at the Technology Expo was about OpenURL. I heard about this once before in the Introduction to Information Technology class, but it makes more sense now that I've experienced doing research with an OpenURL resolver (at Wash U) and without (through my Mizzou account). This session was presented by Melissa Belvadi, Systems and Services Librarian, at Maryville University.

Here's the problem that OpenURL solves:
When I do a search in a database at Mizzou, I might get a citation to an article I would like to read. But the article is not available full text in the database I've just searched, only the citation. Does Mizzou have the article full text in another database? To find out, I have to first search a database of the journals that Mizzou has to see if they have that journal with the appropriate dates and what database has full text of it. Then I have to search the new database to find the article that I already found in the first database.

With OpenURL, a "resolver" program does all the work for me. I find a citation in one database, it figures out if the university has the article available full text and, if it does, links me directly to that article in the target database.

Of course, for all that to work, the databases have to "play nice" with the OpenURL resolver. Here's how they do it: The starting database with the citation allows the university to have a custom link to their OpenURL resolver. When a user clicks on that link, the database links to the resolver and imbeds in the link all the citation information for the article that the user found. The target database, with the article, must accept a predictable URL that the OpenURL resolver can build as a link directly to the article, something like "www.database.com/search/issn=12345/date=2005-03-29/page=12."

There are commercial OpenURL resolvers and open source OpenURL resolvers. Melissa wrote her own resolver for Maryville. If you are interested in more, she put her slides and other material on the web:PowerPoint slides, handout, and test page     #

June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007