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Google Scholar Emphasized Links

October 27, 2005 Author: CDLCategories:

Now that UC-eLinks has migrated to Version 3 of SFX, the CDL has the necessary technical capability to share UC’s ejournal holdings with Google Scholar.  By doing so, Google Scholar will then be aware which journals and papers UC has subscribed to electronically, and will link to articles from those sources when they are available. Google Scholar will create emphasized links for those items in Google Scholar, which are included in full text.  If an item is not available in full text, the link will still appear, but in a less prominent location.  Both links will include the UC-eLinks services activated by the campuses, i.e., links to full text, catalogs, Request, etc.  The link will appear as a text string, and not as the UC-eLinks graphic.  To see an example of emphasized links in Harvard’s collection, see http://scholar.google.com/scholar/librarylinks.html.

Why do it?

Although we are reluctant to some degree to share our holdings with Google (less because of data sharing issues than with the way the linking occurs), we believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.  Titles only — not providers — will be shared with Google.  The advantages of sharing our holdings are:

  • Making our licensed resources as visible as possible to our users; we want them to be used.
  • The CDL has only been involved in Beta testing the UC-eLinks feature in Google Scholar thus far.  If we decide not to share our holdings, the UC-eLinks links would be removed entirely in January 2006.
  • By continuing to partner with Google in this effort, we continue to be able to leverage the voice of the UC libraries with Google.
  • Finally, a recent survey of the UC campuses reveals that Google Scholar is beginning to be used as a serious research tool in their libraries, and that some even have Google Scholar information pages on campus library web sites.  For the survey results, see
    [http://www.cdlib.org/inside/assess/evaluation_activities/googleScholar.pdf].
    We want to continue to be involved in future Google innovations.

How will it work?

Margery Tibbetts will set up the process once with Google Scholar for the CDL and the campuses (except UC Davis, which has its own instance of UC-eLinks; Davis staff will set up their process). After that, records will be automatically updated every two weeks.  The new linking will begin for CDL-licensed resources around November 1.