Creating Links to Online Articles Using SFX

• License Agreements about the Use of Full-text Articles
• Problems with Linking to Online Articles
• Solution Using SFX
• Enquiry

[ Library Resources for Web-based Teaching ]

License Agreements about the Use of Full-text Articles

When you prepare your web-based teaching materials such as a course reading list or an assignment, do you want to include some useful articles that you can find in the Library-subscribed e-resources?

If you want to do so, please note:

The license agreements with various information providers prohibit downloading and storage of the online full-text articles in any file format on local servers (e.g. the Blackboard e-learning platform, or any departmental web server) for access by the CityU community or the public. You would violate the terms and conditions of use of these resources if you do so.

However, providing hyperlinks to articles residing on information providers' servers from your web-based teaching materials is allowed. But you will also encounter some problems.

Problems with Linking to Online Articles

1. There is no direct way to access a particular full-text article other than searching and navigating through the database/site concerned. The URL displayed in the "Address" bar of the browser when you are viewing an article does not refer to the desired document.
   
   
2. The URL bookmarked when you are viewing an article fails to retreive the same article when you re-visit your bookmark later. The retrieval syntax for the remote server may have changed or the bookmarked URL may contain server-specific and session-specific information that hinders article retrieval the next time.
   
   
3. Though some of the information providers do provide special linking syntax or special tools to create stable links to their full-text articles, many e-resource vendors still do not provide such facilities. The pool of articles that you can link to is thus limited if you depend on the use of these resource-specific linking facilities.
   
   
4. The special linking facilites provided by various vendors may not be compatible with the access control employed by the Library and hence your students may be denied access to the articles linked from your web-based teaching materials when they attempt to access these articles from places other than the CityU main campus.
   
   
5. Full-text journal coverage in aggregator fulltext databases such as ProQuest, EBSCOhost, LexisNexis Academic changes frequently (i.e. articles available in them today may become unavailable tomorrow) and the Library's subscriptions to e-resources will also change with time. A direct link to an article created today may become broken when the specified source is no longer available. (But there may be other available sources for the same article that the Library has subscription to!)

Solution Using SFX

With the launch of SFX, the resource-linking service provided by the Library, there is a solution to all these linking problems -- capture OpenURL^* links to our SFX link server, which can dynamically generate links to "available sources" of the desired articles, and embed these OpenURL links in your web-based teaching materials.

Advantages of using such OpenURLs

1. When your students click on these OpenURL links, the fulltext links in the SFX menu are generated dynamically after checking against the Library's current holdings of e-journals. Problem (5) mentioned above can be avoided.
   
   
2. The pool of articles that you can link to is greatly widened as e-resources that do not provide persistent direct linking syntax/tools can also be linked to via SFX (see problem (3) mentioned above).
   
   
3. You don't need to learn all the different linking syntax used by different resources.

How to capture OpenURLs to SFX server for the desired articles?

(A) When you already have a complete citation in hand, use the Citation Linker:

Tutorial on capturing links to articles using the Citation Linker

(B) When you are searching in an SFX-enabled database:

Tutorial on capturing links to articles when searching in an SFX-enabled database

N.B.
If you choose to "Open" the above tutorials (.pps files) instead of to "Save" them, for proper display of the animation in the presentation slides, use the <Pg Up> <Pg Dn> keys for navigation. Alternatively, right click on the first slide, then select Full Screen in the pop-up menu.

Enquiry

Enquiries about linking to online full-text articles from your web-based teaching materials can be directed to lbwbt@cityu.edu.hk or 3442-6402.