The document summarizes a study by the 2CUL E-Books Task Force on improving OpenURL linking for e-books. They analyzed OpenURL request data to evaluate how well different providers incorporated key fields like ISBN that help lead to full text access. Providers including Summon and EBSCO included these fields in the majority of requests and saw higher success rates, while others like OUP included them less frequently and had lower success. The task force recommends best practices like always including ISBN for books to improve the user experience in accessing full text.

1. E-Books & OpenURL Linking
A collaborative study by the
2CUL E-Books Task Force
Susan Marcin, Columbia University Libraries
smarcin@columbia.edu
New York Technical Services Librarians Spring Program,
"E-Books: New Links in the Chain"
May 10, 2012

2. What is 2CUL?
2CUL is a transformative partnership between two major
academic research libraries, the Columbia University
Libraries and the Cornell University Library, based on a
broad integration of resources, collections, services, and
expertise.
http://2cul.org/

3. 2CUL E-Books Task Force
E-books represent a large, diverse, and rapidly growing group
of library materials whose acquisition, description,
management, and use touch many parts of our libraries’
organization. Moreover, models affecting virtually every aspect
of e-books are still evolving, leaving a host of issues in flux,
with many options and no perfect solutions.
● Survey e-book landscape in more detail
● Recommend steps that our libraries should take in the short
term to improve e-book access and management
● Make recommendations for action

4. E-Books Linking Group
● Examine, evaluate and compare the quality of
E-Book OpenURLs
● Focus on what works, what doesn’t and why
Group members:
● Adam Chandler, E-Resources & Database Management
Research Librarian, Cornell University
● Susan Marcin, Licensed Electronic Resources Librarian,
Columbia University

5. OpenURL :: NISO Standard Z39.88
URL strings generated “on the fly.”
The OpenURL path from citation to full text consists of data
being generated and passed through the following places:
1. An OpenURL is sent from the citation resource to the
OpenURL resolver
2. The data is matched against a knowledge base to
generate content on the OpenURL resolver page
3. A second proprietary URL is sent from the resolver page to
the full text

6. User Experience (UX): E-Book Citation
link

7. What the OpenURL string looks like
(invisible to user)
http://rd8hp6du2b.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.
88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:
sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:
mtx:dc&
rft.title=Apple+Developer+Programs&
rft.date=2010-01-01&
rft.pub=Apress&
rft.isbn=1430229314&
rft.spage=179&
rft.epage=190&rft_id=info:doi/10.1007%2F978-1-4302-2932-
2_9&rft.externalDBID=n%2Fa&rft.externalDocID=978-1-4302-
2932-2_209124_Chap9
link

8. UX:
Link
Resolver
Page
link

9. UX: Full Text

10. Why does improved OpenURL linking
matter?
Users
● Better user experience: Users expect the provision of easy
connection between library resources
● Increased patron satisfaction with library e-resources
Library
● Enhanced discovery of and cross-linking into subscription e-
resources

11. How did the task force assess the
quality of E-Book OpenURLs?
● Looked at NISO IOTA data
(IOTA = Improving OpenURL through Analytics)
● IOTA tracks the OpenURLs sent from citations to link
resolvers
http://openurlquality.niso.org/

12. Question: How many patron requests
for e-books resulted in full text?
To find the answer --
Three weeks of Columbia U's openURL log data on the NISO
servers analyzed:
● one week from January 2011
● one week from February 2011
● one week from March 2011
78,540 total openURL requests in these 3 weeks
How many of these OpenURLs are for e-books?
● 1474 Requests that contained an ISBN
● 781 Requests that lacked an ISBN but contained
genre=book
We analyzed 2255 e-book OpenURLs.

13. ISBNs in OpenURL Strings - Do they
matter?
1474 OpenURL Requests contained an ISBN
Yes No
Full text link offered? 47% (698/1474) 53% (773/1474)
"Get Book" link Successful?
Yes (book link No (book link fails) N/A (links to
leads to full-text journal, rather
successfully) than book or
cannot process
information)
"Get Book" link 94.9% (663/698) 1.1% (8/698) 3.9% (27/698)
Successful?

14. Including "Genre=Book" in OpenURL
Strings
Lacks ISBN, but found full text anyway?
Yes No
Found full text? 28% (208/781) 73% (573/781)

15. OpenURL linking failure :: "Bad" Data
● Correctly identified as "genre=book," but article title "atitle"
passed in openURL string.
http://rd8hp6du2b.search.serialssolutions.com/?
SS_Page=refiner&sid=sersol%3ARefinerQuery&rft.
aulast=Mihailovic&url_ver=Z39.88-
2004&l=RD8HP6DU2B&SS_ReferentFormat=BookFormat&rft.
genre=book&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%
3Abook&rft.
atitle=corporeal+words&citationsubmit=Search&SS_LibHash=R
D8HP6DU2B&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsersol%
3ARefinerQuery&rft.
aufirst=Alexandar&SS_Errors=RequiredDataMissing
link

16. We do have this book in our catalog
link

17. A better OpenURL might look like this
http://rd8hp6du2b.search.serialssolutions.com/?rft.
au=Mihailovic%2C+Alexandar&sid=sersol%
3ARefinerQuery&SS_authors=Mihailovic%2C+Alexandar&rft.
aulast=Mihailovic&url_ver=Z39.88-
2004&l=RD8HP6DU2B&SS_ReferentFormat=BookFormat&rft.
genre=book&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%
3Abook&rft.title=Corporeal+Words&rft.
isbn=0810114593&citationsubmit=Search&paramdict=en-
US&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsersol%
3ARefinerQuery&SS_LibHash=RD8HP6DU2B&SS_isbnh=0-
8101-1459-3&rft.aufirst=Alexandar
link

18. IOTA Metric Report: ISBN
Drawing from our Percentage of Total number of
observations Vendor OpenURL requests OpenURLs
about the that contain ISBN analyzed
importance of summon.serialssolutions. 98 17575
ISBN for full text com
ebsco 82 27023
linking, we
analyzed the pqil 82 1170
IOTA metric csa 79 12952
"ISBN" to
highlight the hww 75 1428
differences refworks 68 1897
across a sample firstsearch.oclc.org 65 10309
of OpenURL
unknown 63 3662
providers.
sersol 30 4140
oup 7 2071

19. Detailed comparison of Summon vs. OUP
The differences metric summon.serialsolutions. oup (percentage of
com (percentage of OpenURLs containing
in the presence OpenURLs containing this this element)
element)
of the ISBN
element are aulast 0 90
very important
in connecting date 100 96
the user to the
full text. doi 11 12
isbn 98 7
title 100 99

20. Criteria for improved OpenURL linking
Sending only a title in an OpenURL string is not always
sufficient to find a match. If there is an ISBN associated with a
book, then the OpenURL provider should ideally include the
ISBN in the OpenURL request for better results.
The inclusion of certain criteria do appear to promote OpenURL
linking success, such as:
● ISBN
● DOI
● Title
If one includes additional data, such as an author last name,
with the title, the precision of the results should improve.

21. Can we rank the OpenURL linking
success of e-book providers?
Vendor Rating OpenURLs Analyzed
IOTA E-Book
Completeness summon.serialssolutions. 0.64
com
17862
Report (draft) pqil 0.61 2237
csa 0.59 27483
ebsco 0.57 50927
metric weight
hww 0.57 2448
aulast 1
refworks 0.55 3078
date 2
firstsearch.oclc.org 0.54 23444
doi 8
isbn 7 unknown 0.43 5079
title 5 oup 0.4 3382
sersol 0.29 8227
gale 0.26 3019

22. Links & Contact
● 2CUL -- http://2cul.org/
● NISO IOTA -- http://openurlquality.niso.org/
● 2011 2CUL E-Books Task Force: Linking Subgroup Report
http://tinyurl.com/linkingreport
● Susan Marcin
Columbia University Libraries
smarcin@columbia.edu