[WEB4LIB] help choosing link resolvers, etc.

[Ward Price]

Thanks to those who responded to my question about choosing link resolvers,
etc.  More responses are welcome.  In the meantime, here's what I've heard
so far.
--------------------
>From Ohio:
We have Article Linker through Serials Solutions.  We have only had it since
September, and so far we love it.  The one really nice thing about having
your link resolver and your A-Z list from one provider is that you only have
to maintain one list of online journals.
We were originally looking at Links at Ovid to be our link resolver in Ovid
and besides it being a very clunky unfriendly product, we were told he we
had to maintain our enitre list of journals in their product.  That was just
doubling the work of something we were looking to simplify.  So we decided
to go with Article Linker because it was one list to maintain and it also
worked within Ovid.
The other thing you might look at is Article Linker will soon be able to
work within PubMed Linkout.  PubMed has some very strict rules regarding
link resolvers, like you must have online catalog searching and an online
ILL request form.  If you have the right requirements you would be able to
implement Article Linker into your PubMed Linkout list.  We think this will
be wonderful.  Currently we maintain a list of PubMed Linkout journals, and
by going with Article Linker we again will be consolidating everything to
one list to maintain.
Finally, Serials Solutions does have a federated search product (I don't
remember the name).  We were not that impressed with it because as a medical
library we tend to really guide our users towards Medline (and other health
databases) and away from anything that is a general federated search engine.
--------------------
>From Michigan:
We're III site  also and in the process of implementing the WebBridge.  I
must say that the learning experience is quite steep (that is, try to
understand what are the WebBridge's developers had in mind.)  I personally
like to try the Article Linker from Serials Solutions,  especially since the
y manage the A-Z list and they already have the module to work with our III
OPAC.  However, they came in late to the field and we already decided on
using WebBridge.
--------------------
>From Connecticut:
You might want to consider Index Data's Keystone Retriever for your
federated search system.  We are the company that developed the Library of
Texas for TSLAC.

Keystone Retriever is distributed under a General Public License, so it is
freely available for download.  We offer optional customization,
installation and support services.  One advantage of using Keystone
Retriever is that we could design your search system to work seamlessly
with the Library of Texas.

Since the software is freely downloadable, we don't have a set "price" for
it.  For about the same cost as UPTA might pay for a proprietary solution,
we will offer you a custom installation of Keystone.  We will then upgrade
our "generic" GPL distribution with the enhancements that we have developed
for UPTA, thereby making the GPL version that much more functional.  In
this way, the entire library community will benefit from your
implementation of Keystone.

If UPTA got together with a couple of other libraries and jointly agreed on
a common set of federated search functions, we could design a basic system
that would be individually customizable by each library, and the total
development cost could be distributed among the libraries, thereby
substantially reducing the cost to each individual library.
--------------------
Someone else wrote to warn me about home-grown propriety code.  They are
moving to open source for their CMS, and are glad to be getting away from
their proprietary code.

Ward Price

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ward Price" <wprice at panam.edu>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 10:18 AM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] help choosing link resolvers, etc.


> We recently migrated from DRA to Innovative Millennium, and are yet to
work
> out all the bugs.  This week we're upgrading to Silver, in hopes that it
> will fix some of the bugs, while no doubt adding others.
>
> Now we want to get a link resolver, and then add federated searching,
within
> the next couple of months.  (We've already made plans to go with Serials
> Solutions for our A-Z list, as I understand it.)  We've looked into SFX,
> Article Linker, LinkFinderPlus, etc., for a link resolver, and MetalLib,
> WebFeat, ENCompass, and others for federated searching.  I've also
reviewed
> the archives.
>
> Many of you have had these products for years.  What products would you
> recommend, and why, or why not?  What bugs have you had to work out?  Does
> it matter if both services come from the same company, or can you mix and
> match?  I know some of you use home grown products.  That's a possibility
> for us, too, but I'm hesitant because we might then become dependent on
the
> individual who knows the code, and wouldn't have tech support from a
> company.
>
> Thanks for your help.  Happy holidays.
>
> Ward Price
>
>
> C. Ward Price    Web Librarian
> University of Texas-Pan American
> http://www.lib.panam.edu/
> wprice at panam.edu
> (956) 316-7046
>
>