Members of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) have approved a new project: the development of a Recommended Practice for Tracking Link Origins in a Networked Information Environment. As libraries strive to improve the ways in which users access their collections, gaining a definitive understanding of where a user began his or her library search before ultimately arriving at library-licensed content is an important factor for library staff in determining the value of a platform and how to allocate resources. Additionally, publishers may turn to web log analysis to track where users are coming from.
In many access scenarios, the use of link resolvers-a crucial technology tool-may unintentionally obscure the original citation source. This new NISO initiative will create effective and scalable options to allow content hosts and individual libraries to determine original sources of links, and provide information on how to obtain and process more accurate statistics for this data.
Participation in the NISO initiative is encouraged from libraries, publishers, discovery providers, providers of abstracting and indexing databases, content aggregators, link resolver vendors, and associated technology providers, such as administrators of DOI handle servers. Committee members should be drawn from the communities that will benefit from these new features and who have the skill set to produce a specification that is effective in using current approaches to web services. The full work item approved by NISO Voting Members is available on the NISO website. Individuals interested in participating in this working group should contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director for Programs (nlagace@niso.org).
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