Talis Aspire Ideas Portal
It would be beneficial to have flexibility in the behaviour of the OpenURL within a tenancy.
Examples of the flexibility could be in a form of:
An exclusions list
An option to disable OpenURL for specific bookmarks
Option to adjust the appearance of the button on the bookmark, or to have the button not visible at all in the tenancy
The behaviour of the OpenURL has been a long-standing issue.
In 2015 a response to an idea for improvement to the OpenURL indicated that the experience could be improved:
The OpenURL link is optional at tenancy level. It can be removed by making a request via a support ticket.
We do see the value in improving the experience for the student by potentially making optional at an item level.
However, this is not currently in our near term development focus so it has been moved to the longer term backlog.
Ideas may be graduated from the backlog as we get through the ones that are planned.
Currently issues with the OpenURL include:
Digitisations – the OpenURL button will appear in addition to the button for the digitisation, and in many cases the Library will not alternative access to the digitised resource, so patrons clicking the OpenURL button will hit a dead end when redirected to a discovery service
Content the Library has no access to – eg article subscriptions or resources which providers do not sell to libraries
Content available freely on the web outside of the Library discovery layer – eg articles via online sites like ABC news
More than 30% of Alma Community Zone collections for the Central Discovery Index (CDI) by Ex Libris supporting discovery in Primo, are Link in Record link type rather than Link Resolver. External links into Primo, including from a Talis 'Check for full text' Link Resolver button, deadend our patrons at the Primo Services Page by failed Link Resolver check. So we have patrons submitting unnecessary purchase requests and document delivery requests due to landing at this page, as options presented when there is no holdings match by Link Resolver, when we have Link in Record links in Primo records and access in Talis. Ex Libris is also steadily moving away from Link Resolver with an increasing number of Link in Record collections and hybrid collections, as well as moving to an opt-out approach in 2024 for CDI "Quicklinks" as static links embedded in Primo, as both are demonstrably more stable than Link Resolver.
We had the Link Resolver turned off in Talis for a decade back in 2014 due to the issues with no configuration options, but feel forced to turn it back on now due to the newer Talis Primo Discovery Integration having it as a dependency. This dependency was only documented last month June 2024, as otherwise an error is shown when trying to save bookmarks. The Link Resolver requirement significantly undermines the value of this new integration with goal to replicate the experience of a library's Primo search, because it fails to recognise the scale of Link in Record results both initially during staff bookmarking with failed link scraping, and to consider the experience of patrons with the resulting noise for display of unnecessary links and resulting deadends.
https://support.talis.com/hc/en-gb/articles/17337801485725-How-to-request-setup-for-the-Primo-integration-with-Talis-Aspire
Thank you all for including your challenges and interests around bookmark behaviour and Open URL/Link Resolver flexibility in particular, as we begin to take a close look at current behaviour and options over the next few weeks.
We would like the option to remove the openurl linking for items that we have added a direct web address for as having multiple links is confusing for both students and academics. In cases where there are links for both chapters and books the user is presented with 4 links.
We should be able to remove/hide the OpenURL link for items that we know will end in a dead end.
Hi, thanks for adding this idea. We will review this in our upcoming Bookmarking theme. Thanks!