Using Persistent URLs Through Passports

Introduction

• About Persistent URLs
• Technical Tips

Examples from Selected Databases

• Academic Search Premier (Ebscohost)
• ProQuest (ABI/Inform & Wall Street Journal)

About Persistent URLs

One way of providing access to full-text articles from a journal is to use "persistent URLs" provided by some of our database vendors. Persistent URLs are unique and unchanging links to individual articles available full-text. Webster and Eden faculty can post direct links to full-text articles on eReserves, WebCT or Blackboard sites, or on their own WWW sites. Through persistent URLs, the copyright issue is handled by the vendor.

Technical Tips

Provide a bibliographic reference in addition to the persistent URL. Persistent URLs are a feature of many databases and users may experience some inconsistencies in their operation. We suggest providing sufficient bibliographic information about the article to be retrieved to enable users to locate it in the database in case the persistent URL is not working.

Copy and paste the entire URL. Please note that these persistent URLs are very lengthy. If you plan on inserting such URLs into email messages, be aware that some email programs may break these long URLs into a number of lines and only make the first line a hotlink. You may need to tell your email recipients to copy and paste the entire URL from the email message, rather than clicking on the hotlink.

Academic Search Premier (Ebscohost)

1. Do a search in the database and view your results list.
2. Click on the title of an item in the list.
3. Scroll through the record until you see the line "Persistent link to this record".
4. Copy and paste the entire URL provided.

ProQuest Databases (including ABI/Inform & Wall Street Journal)

1. To capture the URL of a Wall Street Journal article, do a search and view your results list.
2. Find your article in this list of citations.
3. Right-click (Mac users--click and hold) on a highlighted title from the citation list (do not just copy the URL from the location bar at the top; right-click instead).
4. From the menu of choices that appears, choose the "Copy shortcut" option. This will copy the URL to the clipboard. You can then paste it into your desired site.
5. Instruct your students to first log into Wall Street Journal. Then they can back up and click on any or all of the article URLs you provide.