Linking to Library Resources

Linking to our subscription (i.e, limited access) databases, online reference sources, and electronic journals involves some special considerations that you should know about. This is the case whether you are using Blackboard or a course website.

A portion of the URLs for these resources in InfoTree and ALICE makes off-campus access possible.

This is fine if you go to those sources directly through InfoTree, but what about linking to them from your own pages? In order for your students (or yourself) to get the same kind of off-campus access, you will need to copy a given resource's URL from its full record in InfoTree.

InfoTree Records

Here's how to do this, using an InfoTree record as an example:

When you right-click, you should see an option that allows you to copy the underlying URL. Depending on your browser and operating system, this command may be stated as "Copy Link Address" or "Copy Shortcut" or something similar. Choose this option, by whatever label.

Paste the URL into the Blackboard page or other page you are creating. The pasted URL from InfoTree records should include the word redirect. Here's the example from America: History and Life:

http://infotree.library.ohiou.edu/scripts/redirect.html?id=2

The only thing that will vary from one of these URLs to another is the number following the id=.

Particularly on subscription (limited access) databases, you should not go to the database itself and try to copy the URL you find there. Many of these databases change their URL between their "starting point" and "ending point." Another thing: URLs do change from time to time; if you link through InfoTree's records as described above, you should always have the current URL.

ALICE Records

Many of the resources in InfoTree are also included in ALICE, and ALICE also has thousands of electronic journals which are not in InfoTree.

The procedures for right-clicking and copying URLs are the same in ALICE as in InfoTree, but the URL that you wind up pasting into your web page will look diffferent:

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/ejournals/issn/16140001

URLs for journals, such as this one, that come from OhioLINK can be left as you find them. The OhioLINK servers will ask off-campus users to login and identify themselves as members of Ohio University.

http://www.library.ohiou.edu/cgi-bin/redir_athensonly.pl?
http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/AmMin/TOC/

URLs for journals that we don't get from OhioLINK will have two parts. The part up to the pl? will allow off-campus users to login and identify themselves as part of Ohio University; the rest of the URL is for the actual journal itself. Failure to include the first part will deny access to off-campus users.

Please note: the URL in the examples above and below wrap to multiple lines because of their length. In practical use, they should be one long string with no spaces between any of the elements.

Individual Journal Articles

Many article databases now provide the means of bookmarking individual articles. These are often labeled Persistent Links or Permanent Links in the databases themselves. In order for these links to work correctly for off-campus users, you will need to use the same first segment of the URL as the entire journal uses. For example, if the URL for the article is:

http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/AmMin/TOC/Abstracts/
2005_Abstracts/Jan05_Abstracts/Lee_p252_05.pdf

...the link you create would be:

http://www.library.ohiou.edu/cgi-bin/redir_athensonly.pl?
http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/AmMin/TOC/Abstracts/
2005_Abstracts/Jan05_Abstracts/Lee_p252_05.pdf

For more informationsee OhioLINK's page onHow to Bookmark an E-Journal Article