Broken Links and Failed Access

Abstract

This paper highlights three industry initiatives currently working on ways to improve access to licensed electronic content. The three initiatives are KBART, IOTA, and PIE-J. Background information onL ibraries today rely heavily on electronic full-text content. Users like electronic access, but become frustrated when links to content do not work. The OpenURL standard ushered in a new and much improved way of linking to licensed electronic content, but despite broad adoption of OpenURL, links still fail and access to licensed content still eludes users more often than librarians would like. Even when links resolve correctly, users sometimes are unable to find what they seek because of how journal content is displayed on provider websites. This paper discusses some of the reasons behind failed access and describes in detail three industry initiatives currently working on ways to improve access to electronic content. The three initiatives are recommended practices for Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART), a two-year research project aimed at Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics (IOTA), and recommended practices for the Presentation and Identification of E-Journals (PIE-J). While these initiatives will not solve all access problems, they offer solutions to specific, known causes of electronic access failure. Understanding exactly what they do can help those involved in the electronic serials supply chain improve their own work, communicate effectively with others, and advocate for adoption of best practices by publishers and other content providers. To fully understand the initiatives, background information is presented on OpenURL, link resolvers, and knowledge bases, as well as detailed descriptions of the access problems the initiatives were developed to improve. The ultimate goal of this paper is to enhance understanding of the work being done by KBART, IOTA, and PIE-J to provide those who deal with electronic access issues with the information they need to effect change and ultimately bring better service to users.

Deciding to Change OpenURL Link Resolvers

“…Innovative's WebBridge does not have its own knowledge base; it uses OCLC's WorldCat Knowledge Base or other coverage files downloaded from knowledge bases such as EBSCO's A-to-Z, as was the case at Belk Library. Glasser (2012) describes KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools) and IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) that have provided more consistent user access to full text. KBART and IOTA both address best practices for and standardization of components of OpenURL.…”

“…Librarians typically discuss the system in terms of link resolver technology coupled with the knowledge bases that allow the technology to work. The knowledge bases include standardized article metadata and library holdings data (Culling, 2007;Glasser, 2012). OpenURL is a protocol of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) that standardizes metadata (Apps & MacIntyre, 2006;Stohn, Ewing, Meares, & Moss, 2011) to make knowledge bases more consistent and easier to build and maintain.…”

Essential skills and knowledge for troubleshooting e-resources access issues in a web-scale discovery environment

“…Electronic resource access problems, a perennial concern for libraries, continue to receive much attention in the literature (Ashmore, Allee, & Wood, 2015;Glasser, 2012;Graham & Hosburgh, 2014;Headlee & Lahtinen, 2014;Mann, 2015;Pan, Bradbeer, & Jurries, 2011;Stuart, Varnum, & Ahronheim, 2015). The tenuous environment of e-resource access issues is well illustrated by article titles such as "Who Ya Gonna Call?"…”

Selecting link resolver and knowledge base software: Implications of interoperability

“…Work by groups like the UKSG / NISO Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) working group has improved metadata accuracy among content providers and streamlined metadata exchange processes to minimize errors (National Information Standards Organization [NISO], 2016b). KBART, for example, has outlined sixteen fields for content providers to provide additional information that would improve knowledge bases (Anderson, 2014;Glasser, 2012;NISO, 2016b). More recently, NISO IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) offered strategies to measure OpenURL quality and decrease source URL errors (2016a), and NISO PIE-J (Presentation and Identification of E-Journals) tackled the issue of how ISSN and journal title changes break links for patrons (Glasser, 2012;NISO, 2016c).…”

“…KBART, for example, has outlined sixteen fields for content providers to provide additional information that would improve knowledge bases (Anderson, 2014;Glasser, 2012;NISO, 2016b). More recently, NISO IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) offered strategies to measure OpenURL quality and decrease source URL errors (2016a), and NISO PIE-J (Presentation and Identification of E-Journals) tackled the issue of how ISSN and journal title changes break links for patrons (Glasser, 2012;NISO, 2016c). Because of these improvements, the research team at JMU decided to check a sample of citations from the top-used sources in order to test full-text linking success, but did not conduct an extensive empirical comparison of metadata quality across vendors' knowledge bases.…”