Thing #10 -Open URL Technology

Thing # 10 will teach you about OpenURL and its significance in the world of information retrieval.

Objectives:

• Understand the structure of an openURL.
• Learn to construct an openURL with the Pollak Library “Citation Finder”
• Better understand the complexities related to openURL linking success (or failure).
  

Learning Activities:

a) Search for a journal article about global warming on Google Scholar. Look for the “Pollak Library Find It!” link and click on it (If you don’t see this link, check your scholar preferences are set to show links from CSUF.) Write down or print out the full citation for this article as it appears on the Pollak Library Find It! menu.

b) On the Library web site, go to “Find Journals”, click on “Citation Finder” in the upper right hand corner. Enter the information from your Google Scholar citation in the Citation Finder form and press go. Compare the Find It! menu results to the results from the Google Scholar Find It! menu. Go back to Citation Finder and change one of the pieces of information in the citation (e.g. pages, volume.) When you click on the Go button with this altered information, what happens? Make sure to note any differences and your thoughts on the causes and ramifications of these differences in your blog entry.

c) Next, using the Find It! menu from above, click on the “Advanced” in the Find It! menu. Choose to “Create a link for this item.” Copy and paste the information (the citation and the OpenURL) in the text box into a MS Word document. Examine the elements of the article citations (the metadata) and locate the corresponding metadata within the OpenURL. Each citation element will be embedded in the OpenURL created by the Citation Finder.

There are many sources for citation metadata such as Google Scholar, library databases (e.g. EBSCO Academic Search Premier, ABI Inform, Wilson Omnifile) from which OpenURLs can be formulated to create a Find It! button. You can explore the different sources on your own by doing sample searches within the library databases mentioned above.

On your blog, share your thoughts about this activity in a blog entry. What are the implications of having many different sources for citation metadata/OpenURLs? Can you think of possible uses for the OpenURL to improve library services/tools?

Post an OpenURL link to an interesting or fun article you like in the blog entry. Make sure you test it.

Heather