[Yulpub] Accuracy of Yale Links

[Katie Bauer]

I write to tell you about some assessment work that has been conducted 
regarding the accuracy and availability of fulltext links through the Yale 
Links (SFX) service.  When a Yale Link to fulltext is inaccurate or broken 
that can be very frustrating to users, and I think it is important to gave 
patrons a very realistic view of what to expect from Yale Links.  To help 
measure this I've worked with staff in electronic collections (Daniel 
Dollar and Nisa Bakkalbasi) to investigate how often a user might encounter 
Yale Link errors in their work, and also how often they might find fulltext 
through Yale Links.    We conducted a test on a sample of 150 such links in 
April, and found that there was an error rate of 19%. The error rate 
included bad links and missing links (no fulltext is indicated when 
fulltext exists).

E-collections staff have worked at improving the holding information for 
Yale Links.  In a follow up test conducted in June of 300 citations, we 
found that the error rate was lowered significantly to 11%.  The error rate 
should continue to improve as staff work on the Yale Links holdings, and 
we'll test the links again later this semester.

We also found that fulltext links are much more common in some 
disciplines.  80% of medical and science citations had fulltext available, 
52% of social science citations had fulltext, and 30% of humanities 
citations did.  This is just an approximation from the fulltext available 
in this sample through Yale Links, but it is also probably a fair estimate 
of the amount of fulltext available in general in these disciplines.

A summary of how we conducted this test and the findings is available from 
the PIC web site:
http://www.library.yale.edu/fdc/Yale%20Links%20-%20Accuracy%20Assesment.doc

Please let me know if you have questions.
Katie Bauer
Usability and Assessment Librarian

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