Re: WEBADDRESS & content linking with SFX

[Bruce Eames <bme at unimelb dot edu dot au>]

Thanks Craig,

Your detailed response provides much food for thought.

I will let the list know if we come up with any brilliant solutions.

In the meantime..., we had noticed complaints from other libraries that LC 
numbers etc were being caught up in the search generated by WEBADDRESS, and 
I was initially surprised this was not happening to us. I then realised 
that while we have a whole heap of numeric data in the i index, only ISBN 
and ISSN have i field group tags.

Cheers,

Bruce.




> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 21:14:07 -0700
> From: "Craig A. Summerhill" <summerhi at unr dot edu>
> Subject: Re: WEBADDRESS & content linking with SFX
> To: IUG INNOPAC List <innopac at innopacusers dot org>
> Message-ID: <6 dot 2 dot 1 dot 2 dot 2 dot 20050721211304 dot 02787d88 at equinox dot unr dot edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> On 2005-07-21, Bruce Eames wrote:
> >
> >We are implementing Metalib/SFX here at the University of Melbourne,
> >and we want to offer an SFX button from within our Innopac/Millennium
> >webpac.
> >
> >We can see how the WEBADDRESS wwwoption generates a content link in a
> >record browse list (for example), but it only does so when an ISBN or
> >ISSN is present in a record.
> >
> >It seems to us that you would want to be able to offer a link even for
> >records without an ISBN/ISSN, e.g. a generic link to a union catalogue
> >or inter-library loan form, but how is this achieved?  I guess that
> >for the records which do have an ISBN/ISSN, we would want to retain
> >the existing functionality.
> >
> >Has anyone come up with a way of doing this? Maybe some fancy scripting
> >in brieftcit.html?
> >
> >Hope someone can help!
>
> Bruce,
>
> At the University of Nevada, Reno, we struggled with a lot of what you
> write about earlier this year.  You might want to take a look at what
> we settled on:
>
>     http://innopac.library.unr.edu/
>
> A couple of comments:
>
> [1] The WEBADDRESS and BIBIMAGE WWWOPTION options both key on the field
> group tag (number index) not on ISBN and ISSN per se.  Therefore, you
> can (in theory) trigger a link using any field in the record at hand.
> The catch is... you can only trigger one link per record.
>
> We actually had a problem because 13 or 14 years ago when our system was
> originally setup, a decision was made to put the LCCN (MARC 010) into the
> number index (i).  This meant, when we started to implement the above
> mentioned options we were getting a lot of broken links because the LCCN
> (010) falls before the ISBN (020) and ISSN (022) fields in the record.
> Therefore, when the record was serialized and the link was built, it
> stopped on the first "i" tagged field it encountered.  (As an aside, you'll
> find that the options mentioned above will only read data from the |a
> subfield of the field it hits on... which was a real problem for us as
> we had literally tens of thousands of records with multiple ISSN and
> ISBN numbers and the relevant one we wanted to use was in the |z subfield.)
>
> Anyway, you get the idea.  It is possible to create records which will
> generate a link using a field other than the 020/022, but your data has
> to be pretty darn clean to make it work with any kind of reasonable
> predictability.
>
> [2] Having said all that... there is another problem.  The above mentioned
> options are only capable of generating one form / class of link.  In other
> words, you can't use any kind of conditional logic that says...
>
>     if "i" comes from 010 then
>       go to this URL
>     else if "i" comes from 020 then
>       go to this URL
>     else
>       go here
>     end if
>
> This presents a big problem when you have to use different linking syntax
> based upon the object class the key value represents (020 = book, 022 =
> journal or article, LCCN = who knows?).
>
> There are a couple of ways you can handle that.  One is to direct all your
> to a piece of middleware, and have it try to make intelligent routing
> decisions based on it's ability to parse the URL passed to it.  We decided
> that was too much of a hassle.
>
> The other way to go is simply to "hold you nose" and point everything at your
> SFX system, and try to use SFX to make decisions about what menu items it
> should present to the user.  (Actually, SFX does a lot of that already, and
> just the added value for ISSN and ISBN alone made it worth our while to go
> that route.)  The problem lies in trying to get your SFX system to recognize
> something other than an ISSN and ISBN when it is passed across.  It is
> possible to do.  Ex Libris can assist you in creating local object portfolios
> that key on standard predictable identifiers other than ISSN or ISBN.  We've
> done it for a very small handful of small but important publications lacking
> standard numbers, but it is so much work... you're not going to do it a lot.
>
>
> [3] One final thought...  unlike the WEBADDRESS and BIBIMAGE WWWOPTION 
> entries,
> WebBridge (being more than simply an OpenURL resolver) does have the ability
> to generate links -- even multiple links per record -- based upon MARC field
> tags.  We thought about licensing WebBridge, but in the end decided it wasn't
> right for our institution.
>
> I have to say... a lot of my sentiment on this decision had to do with the
> reality the OPAC is taking a smaller and smaller role in people's search
> needs and strategies.  As you implement MetaLib, you will find... in the 
> end...
> it is a hack of a lot easier to get MetaLib to index content on websites,
> index
> content from other systems like CONTENTdm or DigiTool or Verde, and index
> content
> accessible through other standardized XML gateways.  The catalog can be added
> to capability by executing a Z39.50 search against it.  Therefore, I really
> couldn't sell the idea of additional time and expenditure fiddling with a
> handful of records that don't have standard numbers.
>
> --
>
>     Craig A. Summerhill
>     Applications Development Librarian
>     University of Nevada, Reno
>     Getchell Library 174A / Mail Stop 322
>     1664 North Virginia Street
>     Reno, NV   89557-0042
>
>        (775) 784-6500 x227
>        <summerhi at unr dot edu>
>
>
>
>
>
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********************
Bruce Eames
Coordinator, Innopac / Millennium (acting)
Library Systems & Standards Unit
Information Division
University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010
Australia
Tel. (03) 8344 4236
bme at unimelb dot edu dot au
********************