A very useful feature of Google Scholar is the Library Links feature. Using the "Scholar Preferences" link, you can record what institutional memberships you have, and (assuming the librarians have got it set up) Google Scholar will then produce links to scholarly materials tailored to give you access via these institutions. Here's an illustration.
The first image is from Google scholar before I've told it about my institutional access:
If I then use the Preferences link to tell it I'm an Open University student, and return to the search page, I now see:
a new link "Find it at OU" has appeared, which gives me direct access to the article as long as I've logged in to the OU Student Home.
I'm a relative new-comer to Google Scholar, but for me this "Find it at" feature is fantastic. It saves all the complexity of working out how to access resources. If you have more than one institutional affiliation, you can record them via the preferences.
This is a step towards a personalised learning environment, as the materials that are available to you will be there regardless of which institution they are derived from. The institution/s are responsible for managing the resources and for running the services that provide the authentication. Google Scholar (or equivalent tool) is integrating your access across all of the institutional boundaries by aggregating your permission sets. Revolutionary stuff, in a quiet way.
Personalised search and retrieval in Google scholar Monday, April 20, 2009
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2 comments:
The Library 'links' use a Link Resolver. A web based application either installed on a local server (e.g. like SFX, from Ex Libris, which we have), or a remote hosted service (e.g. the link resolver from serial solutions).
Link resolvers use a standard called OpenURL. There are two versions 0.1 - which was quite simple, and 1.0 which is quite complex.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenURL
The basic concept is pass a link resolver a reference (to an item/article), the reference being passed in the url as specified by OpenURL, the Link Resolver will then inform the user of how they can access the article/item.
The big issue here is the 'knowledge base' of what we have access to. Which journals, from which providers, and for which years. And for many journals we will have it from several providers with access to different years.
Managing the knowledge base is time consuming (with tens of thousands of journals), and though there are often 'packages' of journals we can activate in one go, these will often differ slightly to what we actually do have access to, which can be a pain!
Of course, the link resolver isn't just for Google Scholar, you'll find a 'find it @ Sussex' button on Web of Science, Scopus and the many other journal databases which provide article details, but not the full text. It also intergrates in to our 'federated search' application which powers the Electronic Library - Called Metalib. Metalib can cross search many databases to find articles matching a search, and the 'find it at sussex' button will then take you to the full text.
You can even add it to Endnote
There's also a HTML microformat called COiNS which allows you to embed these links to in webpages which refer to articles. (our new reading list system, talis aspire, does this)
I've been playing with a toolbar which uses our link resolver, though I'm still testing it, but feel free to have a go. The toolbar itself isn't that useful to me, but it also adds items to the context menu, turns ISSNs in to links and adds 'Find it at Sussex' links to pages which contains references, such as wikipedia
http://libx.org/editions/download.php?edition=B68D2FCD
Short url
http://sn.im/gjuo0
Cheers
Chris
Hi Chris
Thanks for adding such an informative comment to this post.
I've been grappling with what I think librarians call 'the appropriate copy' problem, because when I am identifying articles in journals I would like to bookmark them using delicious or a scholarly bookmarking tool. This seems to throw up a conflict:
* I want the links to be convenient to me - so I want them to be resolvable to one of the libraries where I have access to electronic resources such as Sussex or the OU
* But I also want the links to be useful to other people who potentially could have access to different libraries
I was wondering whether the answer was to bookmark the DOI, perhaps embedded in a link on Google Scholar, such as:
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=10.1038%2Fnature03660&hl=en&lr=&btnG=SearchThis would mean anyone else who'd set up Google Scholar could find exactly where the access this resource, even if they were in a totally different institution to me.
But maybe there's a better way?
Thanks for the info about the toolbar you've been adapting for use at Sussex. I've downloaded it and am trying it out; I'll send you a separate message after I've had a chance to build up some feedback on it.
All the best
Carol
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