URL/PURL label strategies for hard copies

[Steve Morris]

Greetings,

Anybody  have any good strategies for maintaining URL labels on hard copy
volumes?

A lot of our non-circulating standard reference sources (statistics,
manuals, etc.) are starting to turn up on the web.  I'd like to put labels
on the hard copies saying something like "Also available online at:
http://...".  Labels would be printed from a file when the hardcopy items
are processed and labelled.  It would be easy enough to maintain a file of
these URL's that is periodically run through by a link checker--but the
problem is that physically replacing labels might be time intensive and
would involve mucking up additional workflows.

One solution is to put on a label that points to a web page of our own that
points to all of these links--but that would mean that a patron would then
have to search for the item on the page--adding an extra degree of
separation.  The same problem of impeded (unencouraged?) access applies to
the solution of just having a handout sheet listing reference sources on the
web.  The idea is to provide cues and prompts that make it more likely that
patrons know about and use these new resources.  An actual URL seems more
tangible than a pointer to a vague "list of resources".

I'm curious as to whether using PURL's might be a solution to the label
replacement problem.  Presumably we would still have to update the PURL
record--but not having to track down materials, print labels and mess around
with sticky tape would be a good thing.  And limiting the number of
workflows that this new activity would affect makes the whole thing an
easier sell in the organizational sense.

Any ideas?

Steve

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Steve Morris, Technical Services Librarian
Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library
Institute of Transportation Studies, U.C. Berkeley
e-mail: smorris at library.berkeley.edu
phone: (510) 642-3604    fax: (510) 642-9180
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ITSL/smorris.html