OpenURL for History Databases is Fully Functioning and Ready for Usage
Santa Barbara, CA - August 21, 2003 - In June of this year, ABC-CLIO, the independent award-winning history reference publisher, announced that its premier history databases, Historical Abstracts (HA) and America: History and Life (AHL) would support the OpenURL standard. The implementation is now complete and those databases are now certified OpenURL-compliant by SFX.
OpenURL is an emerging NISO standard, which allows users to link from a citation to a library's holdings. Users will now have quicker access both to full-text electronic documents and other electronic and print resources within a library's holdings related to the article in question. The ABC-CLIO databases will also be better integrated with library system management software. Researchers who discover articles of interest in the HA and AHL databases can now pass all relevant citation data seamlessly to the library's resource management center.
For ABC-CLIO, the OpenURL upgrade exemplifies its ongoing commitment to promoting and servicing the historical research community.
"We decided to implement the OpenURL standard because it is important to our customers," says Ron Boehm, CEO of ABC-CLIO. "Their feedback was one of the primary reasons for our change of approach."
Vicky Speck, ABC-CLIO's Serials Editorial Director, adds, "Making our history databases URL-compliant is a necessary step in our mission of connecting history researchers to the literature that is crucial to their work. So much of what is done to link to online full text relies on meeting defined data standards. Making a more seamless connection between the pointer or identifier and the full text means less margin for error when searching. It is important to our customers and therefore, important to us."
Customers Are Already Seeing a Difference
Meiko Yamaguchi, Technical Services Manager/System Coordinator for the University of Wales Main Library is already an OpenURL enthusiast, both for making the research easier and for the way it helps promote electronic journals in the humanities.
"Like many academic libraries we are spending an increasingly large amount on electronic databases and journals. But where scientists now expect most journal articles to be accessible online, researchers in the humanities may not realize just how many journals in their area are as well. Linking databases and full-text articles is one of the most effective ways of showing people just how much information is available electronically. But just as important, OpenURL searches all of the library's holdings, print and electronic. Our users get quick access to local holdings that are not yet available online without having to re-enter details and do a separate search."
Yamaguchi also praised ABC-CLIO for its customer-centered approach to helping libraries establish the OpenURL connection. "First of all, they notified us that this functionality was on the way, and helped us prepare for it. We didn't have to go looking for them. When the time came, the actual setup only took a few minutes and a couple of email messages to their Technical Support. And everything worked the very first time!"
A Win-Win for Researchers and Libraries
OpenURL is part of a much larger trend that has gathered momentum within the last 12 months. By adopting the standard, content providers are creating a new information web that is facilitated through any library's ILS systems.
Everyone benefits, according to Walt Crawford, Senior Analyst for RLG (Research Libraries Group), who implemented OpenURL for the group's Eureka database. In a "Crawford Files" column for American Libraries, he wrote, "It makes sense for established index and citation databases to link to existing full-text resources rather than ask libraries to license the same source material yet again. OpenURL makes that easy, and it might help libraries minimize duplication of resources in future negotiations.
"If properly implemented, OpenURL is a win-win situation. Good abstracting and indexing services become more valuable by linking to locate resources. Licensed resources and print holdings see more use because the link from identification to holdings is fast and easy. None of this requires fancy new numbers; the information is already there-ISSN, journal and article titles, year, volume, and so on."
ABC-CLIO and JSTOR-A Partnership Enhanced
The OpenURL implementation should be especially helpful to subscribers of one of ABC-CLIO's most important partners in the historical research community: JSTOR.
Now, subscribers to Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life and JSTOR will not only have access to full-text linked data, but access that is OpenURL-enhanced.
The ABC-CLIO/JSTOR partnership has led to a significant upsurge of activity for both providers. HA and AHL were originally linked to the Arts and Sciences I and Arts and Sciences II collections in the JSTOR archives in October 2001. Recently, JSTOR announced that for the year 2002, the HA and AHL databases were far and away the most widely used in their system, generating 240,970 clickthroughs-more than twice as many as the second-ranked partner.
In roughly that same time period, ABC-CLIO estimates that usage of HA and AHL surged by 35 percent - and it is continuing to increase. In all, since HA and AHL became available electronically and full-text linking was established with JSTOR, as well as History Cooperative, ProjectMUSE, and H-Net, ABC-CLIO estimates there have been over six million user sessions for the databases.
The full-text linking and OpenURL-compliance makes ABC-CLIO a leader in networking content through existing information systems. For Vicky Speck, it is simply a matter of responding to customer needs.
"More ways to get more information in less time. That's what we are always after and that's what this new functionality does," Speck said. "As more companies follow ABC-CLIO's lead, unprecedented access to library holdings will make libraries more effective than ever in providing information to those who need it."
Established in 1955, ABC-CLIO www.abc-clio.com is a privately held publisher with an international reputation for high quality and innovation. The company is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, with offices in Denver, Colorado, and Oxford, England. As an educational reference publisher, ABC-CLIO has received critical acclaim for its abstracting and indexing databases, award winning book program, and progressive online resources
Reviewers: Go to http://serials.abc-clio.com to access the Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life history databases and see how the OpenURL standard functions. The OpenURL article links from this site connect to an SFX demo server. Users at various institutions see results from their own OpenURL server and not from this SFX demo server.
To view and download images, go to www.abc-clio.com/publicity.
(Just click on the above links to the web page, or copy and paste the addresses into your web browser)
If you would like to access the administrator module to see how OpenURL setup is handled, please contact Courtney Russell at 805-968-1911 x 347, or email crussell@abc-clio.com for further instructions, or if you are not able to access the above links.
Press Contact:
ABC-CLIO
Courtney Russell
(800) 368-6868 x347
crussell@abc-clio.com
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