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4.4 - Library Links Settings Users who have access to electronic resources through their library subscriptions can configure their ADS preferences so that the appropriate links to the fulltext will be provided when viewing a record in the ADS. If your library provides online linking services, all you have to do is tell the ADS what library you are a member of by going to the your account page and clicking on "Library Links settings." The ADS does its best in trying to find the most appropriate library link server available to you automatically, but in general it is up to you to review the settings and make any modifications as necessary. If you need to modify your settings, you should first see if your institute's library is listed in the pull-down menu at the bottom of the form. If you find an entry for your institute, select it and click on the "Save" button. If not, and if you know what your library's OpenURL server is, you can fill the information in the appropriate input fields, or (even better!) you can ask the person responsible for the electronic resources at your library to provide the relevant information to the ADS so we can include it in our system (see below for more information on this). Once you have saved your Library server information, you can go back and search the ADS as usual. Whenever viewing a record for a paper which has fulltext available online, you will notice that a new link with your library's icon on it will appear. Following the link will take you to your library's link resolver, which will give you a list of options available to you for obtaining the fulltext. Please note that the availability of a library link in the ADS does not necessarily mean that the fulltext paper will be available to you, as this determination is done by your library link server. In general, however, the library server will have the most relevant and complete information about a document's availability to you as a patron. 4.4.1 - Library Link Server Detection and Customization This section provides some background and technical details about the implementation of the library links in the ADS, and may be of interest to librarians and other information providers. The creation of Library Links in the ADS makes use of the OpenURL standard. OpenURL is a technology designed to support mediated linking from information resources providers to fulltext content via library services. By knowing a user's particular OpenURL settings, an information provider (in this case the ADS) can create well-defined links to the user's OpenURL server, which then in turn directs the user to the fulltext contents that his or her library subscribes to. More information on OpenURL is available on Wikipedia. The ADS supports both the OpenURL 0.1 and 1.0 specifications. Users are encouraged to take advantage of this technology by customizing their preferences to let the ADS know that they have access to an OpenURL server so that the appropriate links can be created to the user's OpenURL resolver. OpenURL parameters can be specified using the ADS's Library Links settings page. After a user specifies his or her server in this page, the ADS will remember them during future interactions with our system (as long as cookies are enabled in the user's browser). We realize that individual users may not know what the correct server settings for their OpenURL server may be. Therefore the ADS maintains a list of library OpenURL servers that users can select from in the Library Links settings page, once they have created an account and have logged into the system. If you are a librarian and would like to have your institute's OpenURL server listed in the ADS's menu, please send us the location of the OpenURL server, icon, and the text to be displayed in the menu and we will add it to our settings. This will allow your users to easily customize their setup to use your library's links server. This setting becomes tied to the user's account, so that every time they log into ADS using their account credentials, we will enable links to the fulltext through the user's library link server. Please note that we do not maintain a list of IP addresses for your institution. For more information on this or to submit your OpenURL server settings, please send email to ads@cfa.harvard.edu
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