Wishful thinking: If Aleph could send an article OpenURL…

Ruti Suhami

College of Management

Rishon Le-Zion, Israel

2009IGeLU

Agenda

Managing reading lists with Aleph – Why?

An Article OpenURL from Aleph – What for?

Current situation – How can we change it?

Other applications

Why manage course reading items with Aleph? (6 good reasons)

1. The GUI serves as an internal database with powerful management capabilities

2. Records can be shared across courses, across years and across libraries – saves duplication

3. The Course Reading module offers an easy linking and un-linking of records

Why manage course reading items with Aleph? (6 good reasons)

4. Aleph’s being an ILS – One workflow for reading items that require acquisition/ILL

5. Search options on the OPAC can be accommodated to our needs

6. Offers students the same familiar interface as the library’s catalog

E-reading lists and Copyright

Easy access to course reading list materials

Two considerations

Commitment to keeping copyright

Reading list citation on Aleph +

A link to the library’s full text article

Current way of linking

Different ways for creating a link from Aleph to the full text article: Link to publisher’s website Persistent links offered by database vendors Link to SFX menu

All of these require laborious manual work

An automated solution is needed

The need for an article OpenURL

An article citation on Aleph

Library’s copyrighted full text article

A Link Resolver

Can Aleph send an article OpenURL to SFX?

Unfortunately not…

Currently* Aleph can not create article-level

OpenURL

The infrastructure in Aleph exists, but…

In order to support an article OpenURL, it will

need some changes

* Up to Aleph version 20

Current infrastructure

There is a section in Aleph OpenURL scheme

regarding article details

This section is left empty for future use -

Currently it puts nothing there

What’s needed to change it?

Decision on where to take the article information from Library of Congress: MARC field 773

Ex-Libris willingness to make the required adjustments

Additional Aleph/SFX users asking for it

Other applications

Added value to using Aleph platform for creating local bibliographic databases

For example:

Rambi - an Index of articles on Jewish Studies

Produced by the Israeli National Library

* * *

field 773

If we had an OpenURL, then the user could click an SFX button…

and get the following SFX menu

Summary

The use of Aleph for handling course materials calls for context sensitive linking

An OpenURL is the natural solution

The infrastructure is already there, but needs extra steps taken by Ex Libris

An article OpenURL from Aleph would add value to additional applications

Thank you

Your comments are welcome

Contact: rutisu@hdq.colman.ac.il

2009IGeLU