Embedding Links to Journals Into Your Webpages Using

Why Is This Important for Instructors?

As course instructors at Trent, you have several means of disseminating course readings to your students:

placing print copies of articles on Reserve;
requesting links to e-journal articles we have access to be placed on your course Reserve list in TOPCAT;
putting the bibliographic citation and access instructions (database name) in your course syllabi and leaving it up to students to search and retrieve material;
locating the stable URL for an e-journal article and inserting it in your WebCT material or other Web pages;
using 'get it' to save a bibliographic citation that can then be embedded into your WebCT material or other Web pages.

What Is A Stable URL?

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and it is the technical term for webpage addresses. Do not assume that the URL for an e-journal article will always stay the same. A URL can change for several reasons. For example, a publisher could change web servers or the content you are viewing could be 'dynamically generated' using content management software, which serves up webpages on-the-fly. The URLs generated by such sites are often unique and only viewable at the time of retrieval.

A stable URL does not rely upon a computer script to generate a URL on-the-fly. While nothing in cyberspace is guaranteed to be available forever, stable URLs are more likely to remain accessible compared to non-stable URLs. Publishers realize that it is in their best interest to provide customers stable URLs. Some are using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) standard. Others may use terms like 'permanent links' or 'durable links' to identify their stable URLs.

Directions for finding these stable URLs in some of our most widely used databases and indexes are being added to the database information pages. If you find a stable URL provided by the publisher, be sure to add the proxy server prefix so that students can access it from off-campus.

Using 'get it' From Within Databases to Locate Links to Embed

Our 'get it' service uses the OpenURL standard. When you click on within databases an OpenURL is sent to a server with crucial information like article title, journal title, volume, issue, etc. This OpenURL follows strict standards that the server can understand. The server takes the OpenURL and checks it against a database of our full-text electronic journal subscriptions. The 'get it' menu is displayed with full-text options or the ability to search TOPCAT for print copies in the Library.

You can search an index and look for articles of interest to your students. If you already know where the full-text is located, you can go directly to the full-text source and look for the 'get it' icon. Here is an example from the history index America: History and Life to locate the full-text in various full-text databases.

Step 1: Locate Record and Click On

Step 2: Check Full-text Links

Choose a link to the text. There can be more than one full-text option. Some vendors only allow the link to go to the journal or volume level rather than directly to the article level. Ensure that the linking is working, and if you encounter a problem use the feedback form option at the bottom of the 'get it' menu.

Step 3: Click on "Save Citation Information"

You can then copy and paste the citation and URL into your course material. When students click on the URL they will see the 'get it' menu and be able to click on full-text options. If they are off-campus the library's proxy is included as part of the URL, so they will automatically be asked for their Trent username and password.

Using Our E-Journals Finder

There may be times you just want to direct students to the journal homepage rather than a specific article. Under Quick Links on our home page (http://www.trentu.ca/library) click on E-Journals. You can search for journals that starts with a word(s), contains word(s) or an exact match.

Step 1: Search for Journal Name

Click on the image to see the 'get it' menu options for that journal.

Step 2: Locate Full-text Sources

Click on the save citation information link to retrieve the citation and URL to embed in your material.

Step 3: Save Citation

Using the Citation Linker

If you have a full citation and want to check for full-text access you can use the citation linker that is part of the e-journals finder. Under Quick Links on our home page (http://www.trentu.ca/library) click on E-Journals. Click on Citation Linker and enter as much detail as possible. Use this tool carefully! The OpenURL standard is very precise. If you do not enter enough of the citation, or do not have the right information, you will likely not locate the article. You may be directed to a database and then have to search from within the database.

Benefits of This Approach

Not all publishers provide stable URLs in their e-journals. OpenURL has been widely adopted by most publishers.
Full-text coverage in aggregator databases like Academic Search Elite and ProQuest Education changes as agreements between publishers and aggregator suppliers change over time. When students click on an OpenURL, the full-text links in the 'get it' menu are created after checking against the Library's current holdings of e-journals.
You don't need to learn the different linking syntax used by different publishers.