OpenURL Meeting

Programme Details

Contributors to the workshop include:

Jenny Walker, VP Marketing and Business Development, Information Services Division, Ex Libris
Jenny Walker is Vice-President Marketing and Business Development for the Information Services Division of Ex Libris (USA) Inc. based in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a keen interest in reference linking issues and is very actively working with information service providers and the library community on the promotion of open linking for libraries. In her previous role as Director of Technology Product Management at SilverPlatter, Jenny was involved in the early SFX research work at Ghent University which lead to the development of the OpenURL Framework of Linking and the OpenURL standard itself.

Summary of Presentation: Ex Libris was involved as a development partner in the early SFX research work at Ghent University, Belgium, in the late 1990s and subsequently, in February 2000, acquired the full rights to this technology. Oren Beit-Arie, Ex Libris, together with Herbert Van de Sompel at Ghent University were responsible for the development of the OpenURL, now in final stages of standardisation by NISO.

Ex Libris has played a key role in setting the standard for OpenURL-based link servers, and in August 2003 has 430+ sites in 28 countries around the world. SFX is proving itself to be more than just a link server and this technology is playing a important role in libraries. The wider ramifications of link servers in libraries will be discussed as well as the new demands on link servers including consortial operation and the need for more granular services for users.

Implementation issues, from a vendor perspective, such as hosting options will be discussed as well as the importance of a comprehensive KnowledgeBase for successful linking.

Presentation: Powerpoint | HTML

Stephanie Taylor, Project Manager, Fretwell-Downing Informatics (FDI):
Stephanie Taylor is a Project Manager with Fretwell-Downing Informatics. She works mainly with the ILL/Document Delivery products - VDX, the ILL management system and OL2. This makes good use of her experience before joining FDI, when she worked in ILL/DocDel and Serials at the John Rylands University Library, Manchester before moving on to work for Lamda, the electronic document delivery service, where she worked in the development phase that saw the original e-Lib project move into a fully-fledged service. Academic library projects still play a significant part in her working day - she is currently the FDI project manager for Docusend, a DNER project that is aiming to create an integrated e-journal delivery service using VDX.

Summary of Presentation: FDI have developed OL2 as part of a holistic approach to developing new solutions for information discovery, library management and knowledge delivery. The 'freedom by design' philosophy means that OL2 is able to play a significant role within the FDI product range, but is also able to interact with other portal, ILL and library management packages. OL2 will be discussed in the context of other current technologies and the modern library context. The main features will be highlighted, but the focus will be on what OL2 can do, and how it can be incorporated into a holistic approach to resource management.

Presentation: Powerpoint | HTML

Nick Phipps, Regional Sales Manager, Endeavor Information Systems
Nick has over twenty years experience in the computer systems industry. The past seven years have been in library management software as a senior sales executive.

Summary of Presentation:
LinkFinderPlus key features:
- For the library user
- For library staff maintaining the system

Implementing a locally installed LinkFinderPlus system and on-going systems administration
- Project planning and training services
- Integration with existing databases and serials management services

The LinkFinderPlus Subscription Services option
- OpenURL facilities via a hosted Subscription Service

OpenURL linking as part of a digital library strategy
- OpenURL linking can be more than a solution to an immediate problem

Presentation: Powerpoint | HTML

Clive Wright
Former teacher, then involved with IT training and selling computer hardware. Worked for EBSCO for over 3 years with responsibility for development of EBSCO services for the UK.

Summary of presentation:
How our product differs from that of our competitors
The set up and management of the link server
How it is hosted
Where we get that data from
How the data is updated and how often
The knowledge requirements of the librarian
Training and support
Pricing policy

Presentation: Powerpoint | HTML

Owen Stephens, E-Strategy Co-ordinator, Royal Holloway, University of London
Owen Stephens has been Systems Librarian at Royal Holloway, University of London since 1998, and has recently taken on the role of E-Strategy co-ordinator at RHUL. During this time, he has been involved in the implementation and development of a variety of library based software, including SFX. Recently Owen has been the project manager for the OLIVE project, which investigate the use of OpenURL technology in relation to Virtual Learning Environments.

Summary of Presentation: RHUL was one of the first UK sites to implement SFX, and has now been running the service for about 2 years. We have been using the SFX product to provide links to full text journal articles, to provide searches on a variety of online resources, and in innovative ways within the OLIVE project:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=project_olive&src=alpha
to work with Virtual Learning Environments. This presentation will relate our experience working with the product, the company and the community of SFX users, as well as outlining how we have used the product, and what potential we see for future development.

Presentation: Powerpoint | HTML

Ross MacIntyre, Senior Project Manager, MIMAS
Ross currently works within MIMAS at University of Manchester where he is the Service Manager for the 'ISI Web of Science Service for UK Education' and zetoc the first service arising from the recent collaborative partnership with the British Library. He is responsible for the provision of R&D services to publishers, including OUP, CABI Publishing and Macmillan. He is also responsible for technical development work associated with the National Electronic Site Licence Initiative (NESLI), in collaboration with SwetsBlackwell and the JSTOR mirror service run by MIMAS. He is an elected member of the UK Serials Group and Chairs their Education Subcommittee.

Summary of Presentation: The ITAM Project consisted of six strands relevant to the JISC's Information Environment technical architecture, two of these related to OpenURL: 1) Introducing support for OpenURLs within MIMAS services, as both source and target, thus providing the ability to generate and receive transportable bibliographic metadata. 2) Trialing an OpenURL-resolver (Ex Libris' SFX) in a service environment. The objectives being: o to examine in detail the issues associated with supporting access to the web services, covering: hosted services, interfacing (fusion) services and locally-developed services o to evaluate a potential default (UK) national resolver service o to explore what would be involved in hosting institution-specific resolvers o to compare any/all of the above with other OpenURL-resolving mechanisms implemented elsewhere.

This presentation will recount two year's experience of running SFX, but from an unusual angle!

Presentation: Powerpoint | HTML

Ros Doig, Serials and Inter-lending Librarian, University of Derby
Ros Doig has been the Serials and Inter-lending Librarian at the University of Derby since 1989 and has thorough knowledge and experience of all aspects of electronic and paper serials in academic libraries. She is an enthusiastic member of the United Kingdom Serials Group and served on the committee 1992-98. Over the years Ros has also undertaken engagements for various other organisations including TALIS, The Gale Group, and Swets Blackwell. She is currently a member of the East Midlands Resource Sharing and Co-operation Group which meets to discuss operational matters within the East Midlands Regional Library System. She has just been elected to the Forum for Inter-lending Committee. Prior to 1989, Ros held a variety of professional posts in public libraries and Further Education. During the past year she has been involved in EnCoRe, part of the JISC Digital Libraries and VLEs project programme. OpenURL is a feature of the toolkit EnCoRe has developed.

Summary of Presentation: We signed a 2 year contract with Openly Informatics for their OpenURL product 1Cate in June 2002. This last year has seen it function purely as an A-Z list of our full text electronic journals, replacing an in-house database that excluded titles within aggregated services. 1Cate is a hosted service, with Openly Informatics doing all the work (nearly). Entirely customised with the look and feel of our webpages, it required hardly any effort on our part to set up. We supply miscellaneous titles on a custom table. Linking from A & I databases has been thoroughly tested during the last year and we have just introduced it to our users . It will mainly enhance our databases on the CSA, Silver Platter/Ovid platforms, together with use from within Zetoc and Emerald. This presentation covers information about 1Cate and its set-up together with a brief demonstration of its use.

Presentation: Powerpoint | HTML

Liz Stevenson, Electronic Publications Librarian, Edinburgh University Library
Liz Stevenson is Electronic Publications Librarian at Edinburgh University Library, with responsibility for full text electronic resources, and document delivery services. Previously Liz was Serials Librarian at Edinburgh, managing the acquisition of print and electronic journals. She is a member of the SUNCAT Project Team, and is the SCONUL representative on the JIBS User Group Committee.

Summary of Presentation: Edinburgh University Library is currently implementing the Endeavor product, ENCompass, with a view to introducing a pilot service during 2003/2004. ENCompass includes the OpenURL-resolver, LinkFinderPlus, which can be acquired separately as a standalone product. Work on the set-up of sources and targets, and on product testing, is ongoing, and we have not yet moved to service delivery. The product acquisition, training, support and set-up will be examined, as well as the impact on workflows.

Presentation: Powerpoint | HTML