Library Article Linker
Tool for creating stable links to articles that work on and off campus.
Overview
Library Article Linker helps instructors create durable "deep links" to articles in e-journals and databases. The Linker remedies two of the main problems with links to articles in licensed resources: 1) off-campus access problems, and 2) URLs with temporary variables. Instructors can use the Linker to create reliable online reading lists, in some cases obviating the instructor's need for a library managed electronic reserves service. Although the Library Article Linker currently only works for North Carolina State University users, the concept and the code can be applied by any library that uses a proxy server.
How We Did It
The application is a single web page script, written in PHP, that processes user input in the form of a DOI or URL. Regular expression pattern matching is used to identify and process the user input as appropriate. The output of the script is a new link prepended with a DOI resolution prefix and/or the local library proxy prefix. Article links to some service providers (e.g. Ebsco) that use temporary proxy links are refashioned into non-temporary links. The script locally logs all transactions for stats and debugging purposes.
![Boyer, J. and Sierra, T. (2007). "Library Article Linker: Improving Access to Licensed Resources One Link at a Time", poster presentation for LAUNC-CH 2007 Annual Research Forum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, May 23, 2007. [poster]](/documents/dli/projects/librarylinker/launcchrf2007-poster.png){kind=link}