SCP Use of OpenURLs
Becky Culbertson, Manager, Shared Cataloging Program, reported that on July 1, SCP catalogers began to use SFX OpenURLs on new and existing serial records. These URLs will be used in lieu of PIDs to the greatest extent possible. The same URL, depending on IP address range, points to the UC-eLinks screen that reflects the local campus instance of what is licensed or available as open access. There will continue to be multiple points of access in a record, but, over time, each of the different PIDs will be replaced by one SFX OpenURL which will then take the patron to a screen of choices. The syntax looks like this:
http://openurl.cdlib.org/?sid=SCP&genre=article&char_set=utf88&issn=xxxx-xxxx
One benefit of this type of URL is that, even though the SFX OpenURL is longer than a PID, the URL itself is predictable — all that is needed is the ISSN of a journal, and for those journal titles that are turned on in the UC-eLinks Knowledge Base, the ISSN can be substituted for the xxxx-xxxx (above) and users will be taken to the SFX screen that represents the holdings for their campus, as in this example:
http://openurl.cdlib.org/?sid=SCP&genre=article&char_set=utf88&issn=0123-4567
Why is this being done? The reason for this change is to bring into closer alignment the representation of the many licensed and open access serials available with the SFX instances that are unique to each campus.
It will not always be possible to use the SFX OpenURLs; for example, SFX OpenURLs cannot generally be created for titles that lack ISSNs. In such cases, PIDs will continue to be used.
In order to remove proprietary-specific formatting (the sfx_local portion below) of the OpenURL, we have recently changed the format of our catalog 856 fields. It will be a little while before the old format is gone, so you may see some records with 856 fields which look like this:
http://ucelinks.cdlib.org:8888/sfx_local?sid=SCP:SCP&genre=article&__char_set=utf8&issn=xxxx-xxxx
For more background information on this topic, please refer to: [http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/linkres/linkresolverstatement.pdf]