LinkOut User Meeting Summary

A LinkOut User Meeting was held at MLA on May 21, 3:30 - 4:30 PM. The theme of the meeting was "Promoting LinkOut in your Library". There were approximately 75 participants. We welcome any who were unable to attend to read this summary and provide feedback.

LinkOut Update

Kathy Kwan, LinkOut Coordinator, gave an update on LinkOut, reviewed new features that have been developed over the past year, and discussed plans for future development.

STATISTICS

• As of May 1, 2006, there are 1475 libraries participating in LinkOut. There are a total of 1928 LinkOut participants, including libraries, full-text providers, and non-bibliographic resource providers. About half of the LinkOut libraries are NLM DOCLINE participants and 30% of the LinkOut libraries are from over 70 countries.
• LinkOut provides full-text links from 5144 PubMed journals. Full text links are available from 35% of all PubMed citations and from 81% of citations from 1999 to the present. Links to free full-text are available from 8% of all PubMed citations and from 16% of citations from 1999 to the present. Two ongoing projects increase the links to the back contents substantially:
  • Links to the contents created by the PMC Back Issue Digitization Project.
  • Elsevier Science is filling the gaps in linking for all of their journals in PubMed.
• Over the past year, LinkOut received approximately 1 million hits per work day. The busiest month was March 2005, when LinkOut received 26.7 million hits.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• New Home Page and Help
• LinkOut Home provides one stop for all information about LinkOut.
• easy navigation and quick access to Help manual
• frequently updated information, such as FAQs and training materials
• LinkOut Help is a basic instruction manual for LinkOut, Outside Tool and DDS participation.
• To access the page from www.pubmed.gov, click on "LinkOut" in the sidebar menu.
• A tabbed format assists with navigation.
• Users can browse, search and print the Help manual.


• myncbishare: activate My NCBI account settings using a special URL
• Settings selected in a My NCBI account can be shared without signing into the account by using the following URL:

  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?myncbishare=My_NCBI_account_username
  Replace My_NCBI_account_username with the username of the shared account

• To enable a shared account, click the checkbox next to "Institutions - share filter selections" in the filter selection section of My NCBI.


• Choosing a Display Name
• Libraries can determine what will display on their library filter tab (the library's Display Name).
• To set the display name, sign into the Library Submission Utility under Edit Library Identity and enter the Display Name in the Display Name field.


• New tutorials
• 3 short animated Flash tutorials are available on the LinkOut website
  • Displaying Icons
  • Setting up filters
  • PubMed & OpenURL-based services
• LinkOut>Libraries>Training and Promotion


• New Look for the Journal Lists
• Select type of journals (full text, free full text, or recently added), sort by title or provider, view in HTML or text format.


• LinkOut Promotional Materials
• Help libraries promote LinkOut to users.
• Featured topic for the meeting.

THE COMING YEAR

• Future plans: Submission Utility version 2
• Goals:
  • Improve layout for easier use
  • Journal title ranges, tab format to group functions
  • Incorporate new features
  • Add prefix/suffix to links, manage Outside Tool and DDS in one place, select primary provider
• IP recognition - NCBI is considering this technology to display library icons.
• NCBI Discovery Initiative - a chance for LinkOut resources besides full text to be shown more prominently.

The design for the new Submission Utility can be seen in Ms.Kwan's PowerPoint presentation.

Promoting LinkOut in your Library

Tansy Szeliga, LinkOut Liaison for Libraries, presented a brief overview of the new promotional materials that have been created for use by LinkOut libraries. The new promotional materials are designed to be easily customizable and are available on the LinkOut website. View PowerPoint presentation.

LinkOut in the Hills: The West Virginia University Experience--Past, Present, & Future

Jean Siebert, Collection Manager/Reference Librarian, Health Sciences Library, Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, West Virginia University, gave a presentation on the University's experience in using and promoting LinkOut to their users. View PowerPoint presentation.

Please send questions and comments about LinkOut for Libraries to lib-linkout@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.