OpenURL Link Resolver Implementation Team

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

OpenURL Link Resolver Implementation Team
(OLRIT)

Statement of Goals and Scope for the OpenURL Link Resolution Service

Through ILCSO, the UIUC Library has licensed Ex Libris SFX software, the market leader in OpenURL-based link resolution. The UIUC Library's link resolver service will become operational for public use in 2005, and will remain an actively supported service for the forseeable future.

The NISO ratification of the expanded OpenURL specification version 1.0 makes possible a number of new contexts where OpenURL linking may be beneficial. However, in current practice, the primary use for OpenURL still remains linking from resources with publication-related citations to lead users to whatever forms of that publication may be available to them. These include online and print journal articles, books, proceedings, and the like. Particularly when the specified publication is not readily available, the link resolver can also lead the user to other delivery services such as interlibrary loan, or to alternate/related information via additional discovery tools.

For the near term, the UIUC Library's link resolver service will focus on this provision of links to journals, books, proceedings, and similar publications available to our users. This includes a wide range of free and licensed online content as well as the Library's vast print collection. Many of our users are also eligible for interlibrary loan borrowing services, so our resolver will enable ILLiad requesting as well.

Scope of linking

For sources:

There's no reason not to enable OpenURL linking from all of our source databases/resources that are capable of it, unless a source generates significantly "broken" or noncompliant OpenURLs that can't be usefully resolved.

For targets:

In general, we'll also want to enable targeting all of the resources accessible to our users for which SFX can provide targeting. Possible exceptions that we may not choose to enable are those that don't contain full text or any other significant information not already available within the OpenURL's metadata itself. Also, some targets can't be "deep-linked," and if their content is more readily linkable at other available targets, the shallow targets may be ignored.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN