Linking Issues

• Users have more options for obtaining documents, but choices are harder to bring together
• Split-file problem: parts of run now held in print, other parts in electronic form (maybe at multiple vendors).
• Article-level linking begins to look like a needed service
• A&I vendors begin developing some link-to-text capabilities, but their interest is in vertical integration, not cross-vendor linkages. This means users may miss some content we license, as in this example from UMI where we license the fulltext content from Ovid

Requirements

• Allow for multiple, distributed document providers, and for ranking those providers by various criteria
• Be open enough to accomodate any vendor that we wish to integrate
• Allow for multiple linking keys and for rule-based selection among the keys
• Support whatever level of granularity is present in the data (e.g., title, issue, or article/page level)
• Degrade gracefully according to local rules
• Work with user's web browser; no custom client or browser plug-ins