Reference Linking in a Hybrid Library Environment Part 3: Generalizing the SFX solution in the "SFX@Ghent & SFX@LANL" experiment

Abstract

This is the third part of our papers about reference linking in a hybrid library environment. The first part described the state-of-the-art of reference linking and contrasted various approaches to the problem. It identified static and dynamic linking solutions, open and closed linking frameworks as well as just-in-case and just-in-time linking. The second part introduced SFX, a dynamic, just-in-time linking solution we built for our own purposes. However, we suggested that the underlying concepts were sufficiently generic to be applied in a wide range of digital libraries.

In this third part we show how this has been demonstrated conclusively in the "SFX@Ghent & SFX@LANL" experiment. In this experiment, local as well as remote distributed information resources of the digital library collections of the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Ghent Library have been used as starting points for SFX-links into other parts of the collections. The SFX-framework has further been generalized in order to achieve a technology that can easily be transferred from one digital library environment to another and that minimizes the overhead in making the distributed information services that make up those libraries interoperable with SFX.

This third part starts with a presentation of the SFX problem statement in light of the recent discussions on reference linking. Next, it introduces the notion of global and local relevance of extended services as well as an architectural categorization of open linking frameworks, also referred to as frameworks that are supportive of selective resolution. Then, an in-depth description of the generalized SFX solution is given.