Dynamic OpenURL Resolvers

A discussion begun today by Andrew Pace on Web4Lib had to do with Google Scholar adding a preferences option which, "if you are lucky enough to have your institution listed, you will get a link to your resolver within your hitlist results." After some discussion about Google and CrossRef, someone suggested that perhaps Google should provide a definitive list of academic OpenURL link resolvers.

Ross Singer, who has been working on something similar to Google's preference scheme in the form of his "WAG the Dog Web Localizer", countered that there already was an alternative to this idea. It is a web page with a rather cumbersome name but with a really wicked cool concept, "Appropriate Resolvers, Dynamically: Adding rel and title attributes to OpenURLs. A Prototype".

Basically, the idea it proposes hinges on using bookmarklets customized to a given institution's OpenURL link resolver. That bookmarklet looks for a special html anchor tag embedded in a webpage that contains an OpenURL in the following format:

OpenURL: <a name='id=pmid:22341234' rel='alternate' title='OpenURL'>

This tag could be added to any page (such as this blog entry), but obviously database search results makes the most sense.

The code described above is implemented below. You should see the word "OpenURL:" below on an apparently empty line. The code doesn't appear except when you view the page source code.

OpenURL:

OpenURL:

The next step is to install the bookmarklet appropriate for your institution. The page gives some examples, but none for Syracuse University, where I work. I looked at the examples provided and banged one out pretty quickly.

Click (and hold) on the following SULinks "OpenURL Autodiscovery Bookmarklet", as they're calling this, and drag it to your browser's bookmark toolbar.

When you click the SULinks bookmarklet in your toolbar, the icon for Syracuse University's SFX resolver should appear next to "OpenURL:" in the blank line above.

When you click the newly revealed SULinks icon, it will open the SFX Menu for the citation corresponding to the embedded OpenURL. Pretty slick!

If you want to get your institution's link resolver listed in the project, visit the OpenurlResolverTable wiki and follow the instructions.

Posted by Tom on February 17, 2005