[Eril-l] LexisNexis OpenURL failures

Thu Apr 28 07:09:55 PDT 2016

I usually mentioned the need to have openURL talk to their rep on conferences whenever I see them and they usually grimaced and said something like "yeah, about that one…" 

In the past, we use III's WebBridge openURL link resolver. In order to make the openURL work, I had to tweak the URL to follow LN's URL API specification 

https://www.lexisnexis.com/communities/academic/w/wiki/111.url-api-specifications.aspx (the one thing I like about WebBridge is we can tweak/fix the URL ourselves and don't have to wait for the vendor to fix it.)  The trick to this is by using LN's constant source identifier (CSI) as part of the URL. So, in a way, we mimicked their direct linking as an "openURL." This approach, however, required us to do additional steps before we upload the KB into our system. 

We now use Summon/360Link and there's nothing else I can do on my end except keep talking to LN reps. 

ranti.

--

Ranti Junus, 

Systems/Electronic Resources Librarian

Library Science Collection & Museum Studies Liaison

Michigan State University Libraries

366 W. Circle Dr., East Lansing, MI 48824-1048

+1.517.884.0878

@ranti

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Mandi Schwarz
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2016 11:39 AM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] LexisNexis OpenURL failures

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

We have SO MANY problems with LexisNexis, on top of the article-level linking failures: lack of COUNTER reports (and I agree that the reports offered are really terrible!); their outright refusal to send an updated KBART list to the major link resolvers (to quote their response when I asked for a second time: “I don’t think we deal directly with link resolvers since you’re our direct customer.”); their frequent non-response to reported problems (I have learned that I need to send a follow-up email two days after the first email; two emails seems to be their attention threshold); and the lack of browsability within a single publication on the LNA platform.

We are in the same boat as Melissa: the interface is terrible, but our users want access to the content, and we haven’t found a suitable alternative for the price.

Please keep the comments coming! I am personally out of the office for the next few days, but I will summarize the replies when I return and provide them to the list early next week.

Thanks again, everyone! It’s heartening to realize we aren’t the only ones facing this!

Best,

Mandi

Mandi Schwarz
Library Assistant – Electronic Resources
University of Northern British Columbia
250-960-6455; Mandi.Schwarz at unbc.ca

From: Melissa Belvadi [mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2016 6:42 AM
To: Amy Lynn Fry
Cc: Mandi Schwarz; Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum (SERIALST at LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG); eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] LexisNexis OpenURL failures

We use Simon Fraser's CUFTS/Godot Openurl system and have similar problems.  Basically LNA uses (at least) two different labels for article title, depending on the "source": "title" or "headline". Links that use one will fail if to a source of the other, and the linking system doesn't know which sources use which so it just has to pick one to use all of them time and always fail for the other set.

If LNA has become more openurl compliant than that recently, I am unaware.

LNA is also not COUNTER compliant, or at least not in any way that would be useful to use, which would be a JR1 type report. Platform reports are only barely useful.

We continue to subscribe because the content is valuable enough to put up with their horrible user interface as well as these other problems.   But oh, if we could get that content elsewhere for an equivalent price, we'd be gone in a heartbeat.

Melissa Belvadi, UPEI

On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Amy Lynn Fry <afry at bgsu.edu> wrote:

Yes – LexisNexis linking failures have increased this past year, it seems, and it is the number one problem report we receive from users.

I reported this during the winter to both LexisNexis and Summon. They were going to work together to improve it. I haven’t heard back that they’ve re-indexed LN content. I don’t think it’s gotten better.

We haven’t had a conversation about this at my library this year. We have had it in the past, and decided we did not want to exclude those results from Summon despite their high linking failure rate. I hope that the “news” callout (which we have enabled) helps the most vulnerable users avoid choosing LexisNexis results when they are not needed.

I am also interested in hearing back from others on this issue.

Amy Fry

Associate Professor, E-resources Librarian

Jerome Library

Bowling Green, OH 43403

 <mailto:afry at bgsu.edu> afry at bgsu.edu

email is the best way to reach me

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Mandi Schwarz
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 6:36 PM
To: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum (SERIALST at LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG) <SERIALST at LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG>; eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: [Eril-l] LexisNexis OpenURL failures

Hello colleagues,

(Apologies for cross-posting.)

We have noticed a distressing number of OpenURL failures for LexisNexis content. Using our Summon instance, I located 100 articles (each in a different, mostly-randomly-chosen publication [1]) to test; 34 of them failed to get from our link resolver (360 Link) to the full text in LexisNexis. There are two errors that we encounter: “No Documents Found: You can edit your search and try again.” and “Error: The document section name you entered is invalid. Please check for spelling errors or duplicate information.” Comparing the citation in Summon with the article in LexisNexis, I often see no glaring errors. Serials Solutions maintains that the disconnect occurs with LexisNexis’ unique indexing; to date, LexisNexis has been uninterested in rectifying this.

A 34% failure rate also indicates the inverse: a 66% success rate. Our librarians will be reviewing this to see if this meets the minimum success threshold; if not, we will discuss what we can do to minimize the impact on our users, which may include removing LexisNexis article-level results from Summon.

Our question to you is: Have you noticed similar failures at your institution? If so, have you changed how you present LexisNexis content to your users?

Thank you,

Mandi

[1] Using an updated title list from LexisNexis, I would randomly scroll through the list with my eyes closed and click on a cell. I would check that publication for language (I searched only English publications, because I was using an English search term) and format; I discovered that may publication types are not fully indexed in Summon, including: Boards, Panels & Tribunals; Cases; Decisions; Legislation, Statutes & Codes; and, Web-based Publications. As such, I chose publications listed as: Law Reviews & Journals; Magazines & Journals; or any type of ‘News’ item. I would then combine a publication title search with a truncated keyword, such as ‘increas*’, and work down the list until I found a title that returned at least one article for testing, which I would also choose by blind scrolling. Then I’d scroll the spreadsheet for the next title and repeat the process. While this method isn’t scientifically random, it met the needs for this test.

Mandi Schwarz
Library Assistant – Electronic Resources
University of Northern British Columbia
250-960-6455; Mandi.Schwarz at unbc.ca

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-- 

Melissa Belvadi

Collections Librarian

University of Prince Edward Island

mbelvadi at upei.ca 902-566-0581

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