Single search boxes for article databases.

[Stacey L Knight Davis]

Stacy,

I suggest setting up a form that sets the search term as a variable and then inserts that variable into a search Proquest search URL. Here is the documentation on creating a search URL

http://support.proquest.com/apex/homepage?id=kA0400000004JLyCAM&l=en_US

In more detail, your search box submits to a script on your site. The search terms from the form then get plugged in to the URL for the service selected on the form by the user. The script builds the URL then redirects the user. 

>From the ProQuest documentation, it looks like you may need to have the script insert a + between each term before inserting the search terms into the URL.

Here is an example search box with radio buttons on our new site that does JSTOR, EBSCO, and Lexis-Nexis

http://new.library.eiu.edu/

And here is the script that we use

ob_start(); // ensures anything dumped out will be caught


if ($_GET['db']=="ebsco") {

$searchTerm = $_GET['term'];

$myUrl = "http://proxy.library.eiu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&authtype=ip&bQuery=" . $searchTerm . "&db=a9h&db=tfh&db=hlh&db=bsh&db=pdh&db=ufh&db=hjh";

// clear out the output buffer
while (ob_get_status()) 
{
    ob_end_clean();
}

header("Location: $myUrl");

}


if  ($_GET['db']=="lexis") {

$searchTerm = $_GET['term'];

$myUrl = "http://proxy.library.eiu.edu:2048/login?url=http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=8399&stp=fr&sr=+" .$searchTerm; 


// clear out the output buffer
while (ob_get_status()) 
{
    ob_end_clean();
}

header("Location: $myUrl");

}



if  ($_GET['db']=="jstor") {

$searchTerm = $_GET['term'];
$myUrl = "http://proxy.library.eiu.edu:2048/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=" . $searchTerm . "&acc=on&wc=on";

// clear out the output buffer
while (ob_get_status()) 
{
    ob_end_clean();
}

header("Location: $myUrl");

}



Stacey Knight-Davis
Head of Library Technology Services
Health Science Librarians of Illinois Past President, 2014-2015

Booth Library
Eastern Illinois University                 Office Phone: 217-581-7549
Charleston, IL  61920                       Library Technology Services: 217-581-6091 
http://works.bepress.com/stacey_knight-davis/

“Library Technology Services at Booth Library provides expertise and service that enables scholarship and creative work. How can we help you achieve your goals?”


-----Original Message-----
From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Stacy Pober
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2014 6:36 PM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Single search boxes for article databases.

We want to change the main search on our site be a box with radio button choices for our OPAC, Google Scholar, ProQuest Central, and an Ebscohost database combination (Academic and Business Source Elite).

It would be helpful if I could look at other sites that have some of these options, since the Proquest widget creator makes a search box whose HTML is extremely cryptic.

Proquest widget code excerpt: <iframe frameborder="0" height="137"
overflow:visible=""
src="http://search.proquest.com/widget/searchWidget?params=eNqNks1u00AQx5e07pdAAiEh9VbEBaTUsZNC00pVCflQIoWkbQohJ3ft3dhut7tmdxwnUsQT8RKIJ%2BDKO%2FAOzKYV4gYj2Ts7Hs
 [snip]

Has anyone been able to do a onesearch box with a selectable search for Proquest Central?  If so, please tell me how you got the code, or if it's easily deconstructed, can you point me to the page and I'll look at the HTML.

Thanks.

--
Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Library
Riverdale, NY 10471
stacy.pober at manhattan.edu

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2014-11-22

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