[Yulpub] All Infotrac journals now listed in Online Journals & Databases

[Katie Bauer]

Hello,
I have requested, and Kim Parker has instituted, a change in how we display 
journals from Gale's Infotrac in the "Online Journals & Newspapers" list of 
e-journals. All Infotrac journals now display in this list.

In the past Infotrac journals were not displayed when online content for 
that journal was provided from another source.  Infotrac journals were all 
listed in Orbis with links.  Kim Parker recently sent a message to the 
library (I've included it below) explaining that the links from Orbis to 
Infotrac journals were broken due to changes Gale made.  These won't be 
fixed in Orbis until the next Serials Solution load.  However, the links 
were fixed in the Yale's e-journals database, which provides the display 
for the "Online Journals & Newspapers" page.  The availability of correct 
links was the impetus for the change to display all Infotrac journals.

If someone reports that they are encountering trouble connecting to an 
Infotrac journal from Orbis, you may now tell them to connect to that 
journal through the "Online Journals & Newspapers" page, 
http://www.library.yale.edu/journals/

Let me know if you have questions.

Thanks,
Katie

Kim's original message

Gale has been attempting to improve the stability of the links to their
databases and the fulltext in their aggregated products.  In the longterm,
this will be a useful improvement.  In the short term, we have some
unfortunate issues with failing links.

The below summarizes the current situation, as well as noting a(not so
nice) workaround until the situation is fully corrected.

(1) The URLs for all Infotrac journals have now been corrected in the
ejournals database.  Thus, any journals showing up in the web Online
journals list from one of the Infotrac databases should not be failing (or
at least not failing for this reason!)

(2) The URLs for the Infotrac journals in Orbis are all of the "older url
version" variety.  Thus, until the next Serials Solutions load (hopefully
in under a month), those links will continue to fail

UNLESS

(3) A user is using a workstation where someone has RECENTLY successfully
used one of the working links from the ejournals list.  This is most
relevant for General Reference Center Gold and Infotrac Onefile fulltext.

(4) Infotrac titles are filtered in the ejournals list and not in
Orbis.  What this means in practical terms is that an Infotrac title
available from other sources will not show up in the ejournals list, but
will show up in Orbis.  Due to the inexact nature of this filtering, there
may be holdings of interest (older years or more recent years) that are
being filtered out of the ejournals list, and thus the Orbis record may be
the only place to achieve a link to an Infotrac version of a title (and the
Orbis links are failing - see (2) above)

(5) THERE IS a temporary solution to the Orbis situation.  If someone tells
you that they are unable to connect to an Infotrac or General Reference
Center Gold title from Orbis -- suggest that they go to the Online Journals
webpage.  Have them use the title keyword search for "onefile".  Tell them
to click on ANY one of the resulting titles.  AFTER DOING THAT, they can go
into Orbis, find their title of interest, and the Orbis link should function.

(6) I have determined that at least in the Sterling Library Nave, if a
workstation is rebooted, the "fix" is wiped away.  That is, every time the
Nave computers are rebooted, someone will need to reconnect to a GenRefCen
or Onefile title from the Online Journals list before the old Orbis links
will function.

I could wish that we had better advance notice on some of the URL issues
that arise, and certainly we've been giving our vendors an earful when
things go wrong.

--Kim






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