Vol. 26, no. 3 (2002) of "Library collections, acquisitions, & technical
services" has several good articles on metadata, etc., particularly,
"Metadata and reference linking" by Miriam E. Blake and Frances L. Knudson
of Los Alamos National Laboratory, which deals with some of the issues
concerning link resolvers and why they don't always work. See:
http://epubs.lanl.gov/lww/articles/219_marl.pdf for the article and:
http://epubs.lanl.gov/lww/linkseeker.htm for LANL's work on the topic.

--On Wednesday, October 01, 2003 9:39 AM -0400 Steve Black
<blacks@MAIL.STROSE.EDU> wrote:

Anne Frohlich wrote:
 "I am finding the link resolver I am trying very clunky.  Is clunky the
state
of the art right now? Do you know of a link resolver which you can
configure to truly fit your system?

  To my knowledge, yes, clunky is an apt description, and no, I don't
personally know of a fully configurable one.  We struggle with the same
issues.

  Please forgive the following tangent, which doesn't exactly address Anne's
question. In my view, the problem lies not with the companies striving to
provide good link resolvers, but rather with the bewilderingly complex array
of ways journals may be accessed.

  I do a lot of reference, and I've had many, many experiences of trying to
explain why this link or that doesn't actually retrieve the article.  "Well,
that link only works if the article was published from 1998 until 6 months
ago."  "Yes, usually it will link to the actual article, but for that one,
the link is to the database search screen."  "That link should work, but the
publisher no longer allows online access with our current subscription."
Or, frustratingly often, "I have no clue why that isn't working."

  OpenURL technology will help a lot if all the vendors adopt it, but
linking to full text will be confusing for some time to come, I suspect.

Steve Black
Reference, Instruction, and Serials Librarian
Neil Hellman Library
The College of Saint Rose
392 Western Ave.
Albany, NY 12203
(518) 458-5494
blacks@mail.strose.edu

***********************************************
Jim Latchney
Serials Cataloguing Unit
University Libraries
University of Michigan
320 Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1205
phone: (734) 763 3426
fax: (734) 615-5138
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