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Get This Item from the Libraries of The Claremont Colleges

In the maze of online reference databases and full text library resources, how do you find the exact article you need? Is it available online? Is it in our print collection? You look at the electronic journal list and check the library catalog, but it’s a tangled web of "check here, then check there, and perhaps try over there."

To make the process easier, you will now see a green Get This Item button in most of the Libraries databases. The Libraries have purchased Article Linker, a link resolver hosted by Serials Solutions that reads metadata contained in open-URLs to quickly link you to available electronic articles. Get This Item uses an open-URL to determine whether the Libraries have access to the article you want in online full text and brings together all other means of access—Blais, other library catalogs, interlibrary loan—in a single window.

What is an open-URL?

Open-URL is a standard syntax that provides a way to communicate citation information as a web address. That means that all the relevant citation information for an article, including author, article & journal titles, volume & issue numbers, and date are sent in a URL format for quick location of the full text electronic article in the Libraries' digital collections.

The open-URL standard is a cooperative effort: citation source databases must provide the citation information in the metadata behind their records and publishers must do the same for the full text articles in their electronic journals. Source metadata is translated by a link resolver and matched to fulltext targets identified by the Libraries’ holdings database; when an appropriate copy is found, a direct link to the article is created. When no full text is found in the Libraries’ collections, other ways of searching for the article are presented, including transfer of the journal title into a Blais catalog search to look for a print copy.

How Do I use Open-URL?

Just find and click the green Get This Item button or text. It has been added to most of our online databases and is even found in the bibliographies of some full text resources and in RefWorks, the bibliographic citation management site recently subscribed to by The Colleges. Your click activates the Open-URL link resolver and creates a pop-up window displaying full text and other searching options. (Note: Since Get This Item uses pop-up windows, be sure your web browser doesn’t block them. Alternatively, you can choose to add http://libraries.claremont.edu and http://ry6af4uu9w.search.serialssolutions.com to your list of approved pop up sites.)

If you have questions about using Get This Item, use the FAQ link which you’ll find in “Other Resources” in the Get This Item window, or contact Cindi Trainor, Director of IT for the Libraries, cindi.trainor@libraries.claremont.edu.

Jezmynne Amergin
Sprague Library
jezmynne.amergin@libraries.claremont.edu

Jason Price
Honnold/Mudd Library
jason.price@libraries.claremont.edu

Connections is published by The Libraries of The Claremont Colleges and distributed during Fall & Spring semesters.
Edited by
Gale Burrow. Last updated March 8, 2004 by Julie Shen.