Link Resolver Survey Results

The following is a summary of the data collected from the Sakaibrary Link Resolver Survey

General Survey Stats

Technologies Employed

Link Resolver

Metasearch Engine

ERMS (Electronic Resource Management System)

Link Resolver Services

Do you use your link resolver to link to resources other than electronic scholarly journal articles?

Other than full text, what linking service options do you provide to your users (e.g., table of contents, author information, inter-library loan, local catalog search, etc.)?

Context-Sensitive Linking Standards

Advanced Link Resolver Usage

Have you collected and analyzed statistics provided by your link resolver? Conducted usability studies of your link resolver?

Selected responses

• From Breck Witte, Columbia University: We have used statistical reports to identify most commonly requested titles for which we do not provide full-text links as well as to identify rough usage by discipline.
• From Kathleen Bauer, Yale University: We have used the stats from our link resolver in a journal use study (compared to print, and used SFX as a way to compare stats from different vendors). We also did a usability study approximately 3 years ago to test how users reacted to bad links or links that led to something other than full-text.
• From Leena Lalwani, University of Michigan: We have conducted a usability study. Here is what we found:
  • Search button (something that says "search" or "go" or "find it"...instead of just "sfx")
  • Clear/reset button doesn't exist. When someone has a series of citations to search, they deleted each field instead of reloading the page to clear.
  • Clarify "delivery options"...maybe break into categories or give examples of types of delivery available or use different terminology
  • Users we tested seemed fine with the exact match being listed first in pull-down menu
  • Looks like something about the order of the menu did help users. (i.e. they tended to go to Mirlyn when no full text appeared, and then they sometimes tried delivery options after that)
  • Perhaps consider consolidating the Journal and Article tab into one tab...if SFX will allow this to be done.
  • Does article title make sense as the first entry on the Citation linker...why is article author last?
  • Users repeatedly entered the volume/issue/page info at the MENU screen.
  • Consider changing "Source" on the menu screen to something like "your search terms" or "you searched:" because some users interpreted that as confirmation that the source existed.
  • Review the Amazon/Google links on the book tab

Smart-targeting techniques manipulate results in order to provide better service. An example of a smart-targeting technique is to place targets more likely to provide full text at the top of a list. What, if any, of these "smart targeting" techniques have you implemented?

Selected responses

• From Breck Witte, Columbia University: When full-text is available from a number of targets we prioritize and sometimes supress targets based on linking depth and interface quality.
• From Brian Nielsen, Northwestern University: We only display full text resources in our link resolver. However we are making use of the 'display logic' in SFX to provide smart ranking of the targets based on decisions made by the librarians.
• From Kathleen Bauer, Yale University: We order the services in the menu:
  1. fulltext
  2. search catalog
  3. ILL (which only displays when no fulltext is available.)
     Other services (export to Refworks, search of Web of Science) are somewhat hidden until the user selects that section of the menu (to reduce clutter).
• From Kevin Stranack, Simon Fraser University: Each resource in the knowledge base can be ranked, with higher ranked results appearing before lower ranked ones. When no fulltext or catalogue links are found by the system, users can be taken directly to the ILL requesting screen, bypassing the resolver interface.
• From Mark Leggott, University of Winnipeg: "better" sources are listed at the top, the most likely target (ie. fulltext article) is listed first and others (ie. TOC) are listed in a section that can be "hidden".

Have you designed and built any custom OpenURL or DOI linking applications using your link resolver?

Selected Responses

• From Mark Leggott, University of Winnipeg: CUFTS provides a database comparison tool for contrasting title coverage in different databases and has an eResources management component. CUFTS 2 has social bookmarking functions, allowing individuals to tag journals and create custom groupings of journals (e.g. for a course) and use LDAP authentication.

Future Enhancements

Do you have any major enhancements planned for your link resolver or your link resolver's environment (i.e. adding an ILL service option, implementing some smart-targeting techniques, gathering usage statistics...)?

Selected responses

• From Brian Nielsen, Northwestern University: We would like to do some advance query of the catalog before displaying holdings information. The SFX link to holdings for our Voyager database has never worked correctly so we have disabled it. We would like to get that feature working.
• From Kevin Stranack, Simon Fraser University: Enhancing the ERMS, statistics, and reporting functionality. Moving toward OpenURL 1.0 SAP1/2 as necessary - it has not been a requirement up to now.
• From Leena Lalwani, University of Michigan:
  • Automatic fill-in for multi ILL forms
  • Custom categories of subjects for Journals
  • Examining values of canned stats package
  • Parser for locally digitized journals
• From Liz Mengel, Johns Hopkins University: We plan to use the knowledgebase of the link resolver as part of an integrated environment for searching library resources (print and electronic)
• From Mark Leggott, University of Winnipeg: The latest additions to the CUFTS product are social bookmarking tools, which we will start experimenting with. We are looking forward to the wider open source community getting their hands on CUFTS/GODOT/dbWiz so we can reap the benefits.