• DOI – Digital Object Identifier
• PMID – PubMed Identifier

Why is this good?

When you enter either a DOI or PMID identifier in Citation Linker, UC-eLinks gets the additional metadata associated with the identifier, so UC-eLinks can build a more complete citation in the UC-eLinks menu window.

For example, you don’t have to type the article title to have it appear in the UC-eLinks window if you have entered a DOI or PMID in the Citation Linker form since this metadata will be gathered from the DOI or PMID. This saves you some typing and ensures accurate metadata.

How does it work?

1. Below is a screenshot of the Citation Linker form with the new DOI and PMID fields. In this example, the user has entered the PMID, journal title, and date.

2. This is the resulting UC-eLinks window with additional metadata — article title, volume, and issue — all retrieved from the PMID:

Why are Journal Title and Date fields still required?

If you have an authoritative identifier such as a DOI or PMID, why do you have to enter additional citation information, i.e., journal title and date? This requirement ensures you get results and not an error message. If you enter an invalid DOI or PMID in Citation Linker, having the journal title and date gives UC-eLinks enough metadata to build a UC-eLinks menu window.

Learn more about DOI or PMID.

The Thatcher report identified four main issues with UC-eLinks:

1. Image “alt” text missing
2. In-page navigation needed (add headings and use roles to define content spaces.)
3. Form navigation needed (add labels to specify fields and use roles to define content spaces)
4. UC-eLinks button color contrast was not sufficient (change the color of the UC-eLinks button text from white to black.)

The first thing the UC-eLinks team did was to identify the fixes controlled by CDL, and those controlled by Ex Libris, who provides the SFX software that runs UC-eLinks. Most of the accessibility issues had to do with making it possible for visually impaired users to easily navigate through web pages and forms.

For UC-eLinks, we asked Ex Libris to make the accessibility fixes to SFX that Jim Thatcher identified.  We also asked Ex Libris to generalize the fixes across SFX, and wherever possible to do further accessibility testing.

Yisrael Kuchar, SFX product manager wrote to us on 11/28/12:  “I very much appreciate you sharing the report [Thatcher report] as it does pinpoint specific issues and offers the way to fix them. I can confirm that we will be looking into accessibility issues as part of the roadmap in 2013, and this is a good few pointers to start with.”

In November 2012, the SFX user community voted for the top ten product enhancements for SFX and elected “functional accessibility of SFX public interfaces” as #2 (Mobile was #1.) Ex Libris plans to make all SFX public interfaces functionally accessible to the visually impaired and to users who cannot use a mouse beginning third quarter 2013 with the SFX menu and A-Z lists as the highest priority.

Since CDL has customized the look and feel of the UC-eLinks user interface, we needed to make accessibility improvements independent of Ex Libris’ fixes to SFX in these parts of UC-eLinks:

Phase 1 (Completed)

• UC-eLinks window
• Report a Problem form
• Ask a Librarian (the version when a user is off-campus)
• Citation Linker end user form

Phase 2 (See Next Steps)

• Citation Linker ILL staff form
• Copy & Paste form
• A-Z ejournal lists

Margery Tibbetts, technical lead for UC-eLinks, completed the phase one accessibility fixes in March 2013. She tested the UC-eLinks forms and windows using these standard accessibility tools:

• WAVE – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
• AMP – Accessibility Management Platform

UC-eLinks button change

We changed the button text color from white to black to increase the contrast. This is the new button image:

Are you using this UC-eLinks button? Here’s how you can help: If you are using this small UC-eLinks button anywhere on a website, we ask you to use this URL rather than copying the button image locally: http://ucelinks.cdlib.org:8888/sfx_local/sfx.gif

Why? The UC-eLinks button URL will not change. So, if we make further changes to the button and you are using the URL, you will get the changes automatically.

Now, UC-eLinks meets or exceeds the recommendations in the Thatcher report. These are UC-eLinks’ Accessibility Management Platform (AMP) scores as of March 18, 2013:

UC-eLinks window:

• 508.22 – 100%
• WCAG2 A – 100%
• WCAG2 AA – 100%

UC-eLinks window with linking within a frame:

• 508.22 – 93% (varies with publisher)
• WCAG2 A – 94% (varies with publisher)
• WCAG2 AA – 100%

Citation Linker (End User form):

• 508.22 – 100%
• WCAG2 A – 100%
• WCAG2 AA – 100%

Report a Problem form:

• 508.22 – 100%
• WCAG2 A – 100%
• WCAG2 AA – 100%

Ask a Librarian form:

• 508.22 – 100%
• WCAG2 A – 100%
• WCAG2 AA – 100%

After UC-eLinks is moved to Ex Libris cloud hosting in summer 2013, the CDL UC-eLinks team will do additional work on the Citation Linker form for ILL staff and the Copy and Paste form. The CDL will wait for the ExLibris enhancements for A-Z ejournal lists. We will also do further accessibility testing to ensure integrated services such as Request meet or exceed accessibility standards.

For Melvyl: The accessibility issues with Melvyl (WorldCat Local) will be fixed in the coming year with OCLC’s introduction of a new user interface that combines FirstSearch with WorldCat Local. OCLC is consulting with their in-house accessibility expert on the design. In addition, CDL will change the Melvyl button color to a higher contrast dark blue.

Why now? The SFX servers at UC are reaching end of life and the software must be migrated to a new environment. By moving hosting to Ex Libris, CDL will gain some cost savings, and will avoid costs by reducing time spent planning and implementing infrastructure changes for a new host environment at UC.

What does this mean for campuses?

In effect, nothing is changing for campuses. There will be no change to the user interface for end-users, staff, or UC-eLinks administrators who maintain their specific campus-managed titles in UC-eLinks.

CDL will continue to manage UC-eLinks on behalf of University of California libraries. SFX software and knowledge base updates will continue to occur on a regular, weekly basis.

We will need help testing

CDL will ask UC-eLinks administrators and staff to do testing to ensure the system has been successfully moved over to the Ex Libris Cloud.  CDL will coordinate testing with Heads of Public Service (HOPS) , Users Council and the UC-eLinks campus liaisons. We’ll have at least two rounds of testing with the first round tentatively in late May.

UC Davis is joining CDL

As an Ex Libris customer of the Aleph catalog software, UC Davis was the one campus that had its own version of UC-eLinks.  UC Davis recently decided to discontinue hosting UC-eLinks on its own server, and will merge with the other UC campuses– all managed by CDL.  UC Davis will move its SFX instance onto the cloud at Ex Libris shortly after CDL makes the migration. This change will reduce staff time maintaining, testing, and coordinating updates between UC Davis and CDL.

What is the WCL KB?
The WCL KB combines data about the library’s electronic resources and linking features that enable access to the content and help manage the workflows associated with these materials.  Melvyl currently uses the UC-eLinks Knowledgebase for linking.

Why ‘not quite yet’?
The effort for the campuses and CDL to implement and maintain the WCL KB would be substantial, and the features important to the University of California libraries that depend on the WCL KB are still fairly immature or have functioning solutions already in place.

The CDL team is continuing to monitor developments in tools that would make it easier to populate and maintain the WCL KB, and they are observing the experience of peer institutions. Finally, the team will encourage vendors to work together to facilitate data sharing between systems such as Ex Libris’ SFX and Serials Solutions.

Read the full report on the CDL website: http://www.cdlib.org/services/d2d/melvyl/policies/wcl_kb_analysis_dec2012_final.pdf

This enhancement resolves one of the issues identified in the recent assessment of the Central Index feature in Melvyl: Users expressed frustration with the number of clicks to get to the full text of articles via UC-eLinks since direct linking was not activated for Melvyl.

Margery Tibbetts, technical lead of the UC-eLinks team at CDL made some changes to the way UC-eLinks processes openURLs from Melvyl. With these changes UC-eLinks can now support direct linking for articles and show the full UC-eLinks menu window for books, journals and other item types in Melvyl.

For background on Central Index and the assessment report, see a recently published post on View Now and Central Index Implementation in Melvyl.

Question: Because journals aren’t peer reviewed (articles are), how do you decide which journal titles get the peer-review indicator icon?

Answer: Great question! According to ExLibris (the provider of SFX, our UC-eLinks software) the source of the peer review information is the vendor or publisher. Vendors and publishers tell ExLibris whether articles in a journal are subject to peer review and ExLibris stores this information in their SFX knowledgebase at the journal level. Since this is intended to be a journal level indicator, the peer-review icon (little magnifying glass) will only appear in an A-Z journal list, not in a UC-eLinks menu window.

This enhancement to SFX, the software that powers UC-eLinks, is the result of the 2012 SFX enhancement voting conducted by the Ex Libris Users Group of North America (ELUNA) SFX Product Working Group. CDL is a member of ELUNA. If there are enhancements you’d like to see to UC-eLinks, please send them to the CDL UC-eLinks team at CDL-SFX-TECH-L@UCOP.EDU.

bx Hot Articles sample tile (not a working tile)

How does Hot Articles work?
Hot Articles is a mini window (a “tile”) that goes on a web page and shows popular articles in broad subject areas. In each subject area, bX Hot Articles displays a list of the ten articles that researchers selected the most in recent weeks. If you select All Subjects, you see the top ten articles overall. The service is based on selections made by millions of researchers from thousands of academic institutions around the world and is updated once a month.

The UC-eLinks team put a sample Hot Articles tile on the CDL website.

Who would use it?
Faculty and students.

How do they use it?
Users click on an article link in the Hot Articles tile. The link opens a UC-eLinks window or links directly to the article.

Where does it appear?
The Hot Articles tile can be placed on any web page. It’s appropriate anywhere users are looking for articles:

• library pages
• LibGuides or other subject guides
• course pages
• blogs
• publisher websites

Who manages it?
A campus librarian or faculty member can put it on a web page or write their own API using one of the other formats (XML, RSS, ATOM, JSON). Publishers are supporting the tile. CDL, Resource Liaisons, and instructional librarians would need to work with publishers to configure it.

What info do you need to configure it?
All you need is the UC-eLinks base URL. For University of California, it’s http://ucelinks.cdlib.org:8888/sfx_local

Is there a mobile app?
Yes. In addition to online formats—HTML (tile), XML, JSON, RSS, and Atom—the Hot Articles service is available as a mobile application for Android devices and for iPhone. After downloading the app, pick your institution (e.g., University of California, Santa Cruz), and then see the list of subjects.

How is it different from bX Recommender?
bX Hot Articles uses the same database as bX Recommender — it’s power by bX.

For more information, see the bX Hot Articles for University of California page on the CDL website.

What’s changed? (brief version)

In the UC-eLinks window:

• ‘Find a Print Copy’ becomes ‘Find a Copy’
• When an item is not available: ‘The full text of this item may not be available online’ becomes ‘This item may not be available online’
• ‘Copy & Paste Citation’ becomes ‘Copy & Paste Citation or Link’ (and the word ‘formatted’ is removed from Copy & Paste instructions)

Digging deeper into these changes and new challenges for users (the specifics)

Find a Copy

Problem: ‘Find a Print Copy’ was a misleading heading. UC libraries are seeing an increase in the number of online items available through library catalogs but not necessarily managed in UC-eLinks.  When users see ‘Find a Print Copy’ and they are looking for online content, they don’t typically click on the link to Melvyl or their local catalog when in fact many online items may be available in these catalogs.

Solution: We removed the word ‘print’ so it’s simply ‘Find a Copy’. It’s a subtle change, but along with guidance from librarians, we hope it will encourage users to dig deeper into catalogs to find online content.

Additional change: In recognition of the rapid growth of non-textual content online (illustrations, graphs, photos) it’s better (and simpler!) to say ‘This item may not be available online’ rather than ‘The fulltext of this item may not be available online’. Why do we need to say anything at all? We found that users were confused when the ‘Get it Online’ option was suppressed in the UC-eLinks window. They needed an explanation.

Figure 1. Users see this version of the UC-eLinks window when an item is not available in UC-eLinks. The ‘Get it Online’ option is replaced with an instructional message at the top.  (Changes are in red.)

Copy & Paste

Problem: ‘Copy & Paste Citation’ lets users copy a permanent link to the online item, but users don’t realize this from the wording in the UC-eLinks window. Also, users were confused by the word ‘formatted’ in the Copy & Paste Citation instructions.

Solution: We added ‘or Link’ to the name of this feature (see figure 1 & 2), so it’s now ‘Copy & Paste a Citation or Link’. This alerts users to the link copying feature. Since it was confusing users, we removed the word ‘formatted’ from the Copy & Paste Citation instructions.

Figure 2. Users get to this ‘Copy & Paste Citation or Link’ window from the main UC-eLinks window (see figure 1 above).

If you have any questions or comments about these changes, contact the CDL UC-eLinks team.

UC Berkeley Library staff manages UC-eLinks on the Lab’s behalf and worked in the summer of 2011 with CDL’s Margery Tibbetts to spearhead its soft rollout.

Berkeley Lab personnel have been pleased with this new tool, and usage statistics show it’s already getting plenty of use.