Information Resources Process for Research Guides
In order to manage our information resources, we continue to rely on our information resource records in our current website to provide consistent links and descriptions. We have a link-resolver system that draws the resource URL from its location in our information resource records. To that end, we uploaded the current set of records to our Research Guides instance in SpringShare so that you may draw on them for use in your Research Guides.
To use existing resource links and/or full description records
If you use the box that allows you to use existing links (i.e., Simple Web Links or Links and Lists),
choose the Reuse Existing Link tab.
When a dropbox displays that permits you to choose a specific guide from which to choose your resource, choose the Imported Content guide. In the Link Title box, start typing the name of the resource to which you want to link. The titles of the resources that contain the terms you type will display in a dropbox for your selection. NOTE: Do NOT hit return; just type the words in our title until the list appears. You can continue to type until your title appears if the list is too long. Hitting return often hangs up the search.
Each item will contain the phrase “in Imported Content,” followed by an ID number. If there are alternative entries for the same title, please use the “in Imported Content” choices. There will be two “Imported Content” links for every title, one with just the name of the resource (this will create a link directly to the product), the other with the parenthetical phrase “includes description” (this link will go to the Full Description of the resource on our website).
When you use one of these two box methods to list resources from the import, you can add text to describe the resource: in the Simple Web Links box, the added text will appear in a mouse-over; in the Links and Lists box, the text will appear below the link to the resource with the option to see more information in a pop-up. A box will appear for you to add your text after you choose the resource link.
You can also use a Rich Text/Dynamic Content/Scripts style box to write pages much as you do in our Content Management System using a WYSISYG editor, wherein you can paste in the URL for the product as a link from the text of your page.
Where to get URLs for text-embedded links
You should ALWAYS copy links from our Electronic Resources records for use in Research Guides if you do not draw on the Imported Content links (they are located at the top of each staff-side information resource record). You can easily get the links from the staff-side for records you have created yourself. If you are using a resource created by someone else, or if you prefer to get the links from the public instance of the site, use the process outlined below.
1. If the item you want to use is already in the Information Resources table, you can get both direct links to the product and links to the full descriptions from the existing information resource Full Description record.
Please Note: ALWAYS check to see if a record already exists for your item, even if it is not a commercial resource. We want to maintain just one record for every URL, so please do not enter duplicates.
To get a direct-to-the-product link, search your product on the website via the Electronic Resources page, then go into the Full Description; to get the direct-to- the-product link, right click on the product name, then copy the URL.
ex.: http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/lnkr.php?lir_id=2052
Note that the end of the URL will contain the string lnkr.php?liir_id= and a numeral unique to that product.
To get a link for the IR description page, simply copy the URL from the page which displays the Full Description of the product.
ex.: http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/record.php?lir_id=2052
Note that the end of this URL contains record.php and the unique number for the product.
2. If the item you want to use is not already in the Electronic Resources table, you will first need to create an Information Resource record for the product. Then you can use the links from our Electronic Resource pages as above. Once the new IR is added, Rob will import the links to make them part of the available Imported Contents links. If you need the imported content record immediately, please let me know:
You can also create lists of links in the Simple Web Links or Links and Lists boxes by using the Create New Link tab. If you use this method, however, your link and description will show up in the drop-down list of available resources, along with the imported content links. Each separate entry for a pre-existing resource will complicate the updating and managing of the URL and name of that resource. Added resources will be labeled with the name of the Research Guide on which they were created. We discourage the use of this method, but if you use it, ALWAYS use the linking system from our website’s public-side Electronic Resources listings—they will then draw the product URL from the main IR table on our website. You will therefore need to create an Information Resources record for your product on the UK web-server side using our Content Management System. Creating a record there has the added benefit of making the item available to your users if they search our Electronic Resources listing for the product by name and allows other CMs to easily use the product on their guides.
http://libguides.uky.edu/
http://libguides.uky.edu/libguidelines/
(Also in SharePoint Web Content Group folder and on the staffinfo page)