[Web4lib] For informal cites to friends and acquaintances in discussing a particular catalog entry, how do you cite, format the URL for a particular Boston Public Library catalog entry?...

[Greg Fleming]

There is a way to do this without out the session information, etc., but it's nothing that can be done with the URLs that you get from a search. It involves pulling the item's control number from the MARC record and constructing a URL like this:
http://catalog.mbln.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&index=bib&term=1850094

Open WorldCat seems a much better option, as Tom suggests. 

Here's our documentation, which is behind our firewall, I believe. It's not something we advertise to our patrons, for obvious reasons.
Linking to a Specific Record
You can create a link from any individual bibliographic citation in a bibliography, syllabus, reading list, etc. to the corresponding Full Bibliographic Record display in the Catalog. 

Connect to the University of Chicago Catalog ucstaff profile. 
Perform a search to find the title to which you want to create a link.
Display the Full Bibliographic Record for the title. 
Click the MARC Display link in the box on the left to display the MARC record.
Copy the Bib# that appears on the right of the screen.
Go to the application/document/page where you are creating the link.
Create a URL as follows: http://ipac.lib.uchicago.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&index=BIB&term=4557482 where the number appearing after "&term=" is the Bib# copied in Step 5.
Repeat as needed.

Greg

> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-
> bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Dowling
> Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 7:04 AM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] For informal cites to friends and acquaintances in
> discussing a particular catalog entry, how do you cite, format the URL for a
> particular Boston Public Library catalog entry?...
> 
> On 03/12/2009 02:51 PM, don warner saklad wrote:
> > a.
> > For informal cites to friends and acquaintances in discussing a particular
> > catalog entry, how do you cite, format the URL for a particular Boston
> > Public Library catalog entry?
> 
> 
> Having looked at these ugly URLs a couple of times now, I don't think
> you're going to get this pared down to something friendly you can easily
> share [a serious failing of the catalog design, IMO].  Factoring in the
> possibility that your friends and acquaintances might access other
> Boston-area libraries, I'd bail out on citing BPL catalog URLs entirely.
>  Instead, I'd find the item in Worldcat and just share that URL (minus
> any query string parameters if you prefer):
> 
>   http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/122291427
> 
> If you haven't already configured a Boston ZIP code, pop one in and BPL
> holdings will be near the top.
> 
> 
> --
> Thomas Dowling
> tdowling at ohiolink.edu
> 
> 
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