Google Scholar, Firefox, and OpenURLs

[george at library.caltech.edu]

[Forwarding from JISC-Development & SPARC Open Access Forum.  --George]


This is a pretty neat Firefox extension, though it may be that the
OpenURLs it generates are a little too minimal to create reliable onward
links?

Anyway, I've made a slightly modified version of the extension that
points to the openurl.ac.uk OpenURL router service hosted by EDINA [1]
and put it at

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/openurl/googlescholar/googles
cholaropenurl.xpi

To install, just visit the above URL in Firefox and then follow the
prompts.

This should work for anyone in the UK who uses Firefox (hey, who doesn't
use Firefox these days?!) and who wants to see OpenURL buttons next to
the search results in Google Scholar.  Obviously, it'll work better for
those of you in institutions that have an OpenURL resolver up and
running - otherwise you'll have a choice of using the MIMAS LitLink
resolver or the EDINA ZBLSA one (I think).

Because the OpenURL router is being used, there is no need to create a
specific version of the Firefox extension for your university.

It seems to me that this is quite a nice demonstration of Google and
JISC Information Environment technologies being used in combination.

Feedback welcome...

Andy
--
Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell       +44 1225 383933
Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/

[1] http://openurl.ac.uk/doc/