LinkOut - Explore beyond PubMed

[Y Kathy Kwan]

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LinkOut - Explore beyond PubMed
-------------------------------

Do your library users search PubMed from the National Library of Medicine? Would
it be useful to inform your users on a PubMed citation whether your library has
electronic access to the full-text? You can do so by participating in LinkOut.

LinkOut is a feature of Entrez, an information system developed by the National
Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Library of Medicine.
LinkOut provides an integrated information space, which allows users to move
seamlessly between PubMed and other Entrez databases to a variety of relevant,
web-accessible online resources provided by third parties.

LinkOut in PubMed allows a library to choose which full-text providers to link
to.  This includes publishers of electronic journals and all full-text providers
that participate in LinkOut.  In addition, a library can supply links to
locally-loaded journal collections or any e-journal collection for which the
library can provide reliable URLs.  Consequently, a library can easily setup an
environment for its users that features seamless and appropriate links to its
electronic collection.

The majority of links in PubMed point to online journals, but the scope of
LinkOut exceeds that.  LinkOut includes information that is specific to the
subject area of PubMed citations and relevant to users' research and study.
Currently, users can find links to consumer health information, commentaries on
articles, authors' background and research interests, datasets of articles,
practice guidelines, and more.  In development is the ability to link to a
library's print collection holdings.  Through LinkOut, PubMed citations become
an entry point to countless relevant resources on the web.

Libraries provide links to their e-journal collections via the Library LinkOut
Files Submission Utility, where holdings are simply checked off.  Use of the
Utility is free to all libraries. For registration, please send a request to
linkout at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and include the name of the library and a contact
person, telephone number, and address.

Documentation on LinkOut and library holdings is available at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/linkout/doc/liblinkout.html

and

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/linkout/

US libraries may call the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) at
1-800-338-7657 for additional assistance.  NNLM also maintains a LinkOut guide
for librarians at http://nnlm.gov/libinfo/ejournals/linkout/

Please send your comments and questions to linkout at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov