LibX has always supported autolinking for identifiers such as ISBNs, ISSNs, DOIs, and others. When LibX believes that a page contains such identifiers, it will place a link where they are located on the page. Clicking on the link will lead the user to a search using that identifier in the edition’s primary catalog. (The primary catalog is the one listed first in the list of catalogs by the edition maintainer.)
In addition, if the user hovers over the link, a tooltip appears that displays additional information about the item to which the identifier refers. LibX uses services such as xISBN, xISSN, or CrossRef’s and Pubmed’s APIs to retrieve metadata about the item, such as the title, author, publication year, and others.
LibX editions in which Summon is configured as the primary catalog will go even further: when the user hovers over the link, LibX will contact that library’s Summon instance to search for the item in Summon. The results of this search are directly displayed in the tooltip, as shown below.
To contact Summon, LibX has two options, which we call “Summon Widget” and “Summon API (via proxy)”. The Summon Widget service is less detailed and does not show circulation information, but can be used immediately by any Summon customer. The Summon API (via proxy) requires an API key and it requires that you run our proxy on your machines where the API key is located, but it provides more detailed information. The Summon API also requires that the URL of the Summon proxy be included in the edition configuration.
Please note that the enhanced autolinking feature is available only if Summon is configured as an edition’s primary (i.e., first) catalog. (Otherwise, the autolink would lead to a different location than what appears in the tooltip, misleading the user).
The enhanced autolinking feature was developed by Anand Swaminathan (anand12100@gmail.com).
Below are screenshots for autolinks around ISBN, ISSN, DOIs, and Pubmed Ids found on different pages. Note that for ISBNs, LibX searches Summon for all editions listed by the xISBN service, not just the one hyperlinked. The screenshots show the results when the Summon Widget service is used.
Autolinks for ISBN
Autolinks for ISSN
Autolinks for DOI
Autolinks for PubMed
