Google Scholar Incompatible with NLM's Loansome Doc
Dean Giustini mentions how Barbara Quint's article, Google Scholar Adds Pay-Per-View Delivery from The British Library, has raised some issues regarding how doctors will find and order articles. The U.S. National Library of Medicine (in response to questions from the UBC Google Scholar) said they have no plans to work with Google to implement Loansome Doc within Google Scholar.
As it currently stands NLM's Loansome Doc would not work with Scholar because requests are sent to the nearest owning library. The partnership between the BL Direct (the British Library document delivery system) and Google Scholar has had a good response. However, Giustini suggests that despite the fact NLM will not partner its Loansome Doc up with Google Scholar, "nothing is stopping individual medical libraries from making agreements with Google for such a service."
I am not sure what Giustini means exactly. Does he mean that there is nothing stopping individual libraries from partnering with Google Scholar to provide links to their library collection (which some libraries are already doing), or does he mean a document delivery service complete with fees and copyright?
2 Comments:
I think he's referring to the Library Links option, which lets you sign up your library and the link resolver does the rest. They provide an explanation here:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar/librarylinks.html
--Amanda
Hi Amanda & Krafty,
You are *both* correct.
Library Links is a useful feature for users; but, when the document cannot be provided by a local library, options for docdel would be useful.
As you know, the regional medical library (RMLs) in the U.S. provide documents first; then, it's off to the NLM. I guess the idea is that there is no reason to go to NLM if the article can be provided by a library that is closer to the requestor. At least, that's what NLM seems to be saying.
I have heard a rumour that CISTI in Canada is contemplating looking at providing an easy link to its docdel service from within Google scholar. This seems the most convenient option for some users.
Dean Giustini
UBC Google scholar blogger
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