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Reports on the ground‐breaking work by Herbert Van de Sompel while associated with Ghent University, Belgium, and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has led to the creation of an open linking framework for scholarly research. The open linking framework proposed by Van de Sompel puts libraries firmly in control, allowing them to determine the scope of their institution’s interlinked research environment both in terms of extent and range of link services offered to their users. It places librarians in the “trail‐blazers” profession, predicted by Vannevar Bush in 1945: they enthuse in the task of establishing useful links between resources. The creation of such an open linking environment requires the collaboration of all the stakeholders in the information industry; and underlying the success of this is an emerging standard, the OpenURL, now on a fast track path to acceptance by NISO. Van de Sompel’s research work led to the development of the SFX server technology, which was demonstrated in operation at both the Ghent University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ex Libris subsequently purchased the SFX server technology from Ghent University in early 2000.

The authors, who jointly serve as the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) executive, reflect on the three‐year history of the OAI. Three years of technical work recently culminated in the release of a stable production version 2 of the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH). This technical product, the work that led up to it, and the process that made it possible have attracted some favor from the digital library and information community. The paper explores a number of factors in the history of the OAI that the authors believe have contributed to this positive response. The factors include focus on a defined problem statement, an operational model in which strong leadership is balanced with solicited participation, a healthy dose of community building and support, and sensible technical decisions.

SFX is an XML‐based product designed to inter‐link electronic resources with other resources in context‐sensitive manner. SFX was first developed at the University of Ghent by Herbert Van de Sompel and has been released as a commercial product by Ex Libris. Use statistics garnered from SFX’s statistics module since the implementation in July of 2001 are discussed in the context of an academic research library environment. The results from usability testing conducted at Washington State University are reported. These usage statistics demonstrated a pattern of increasing use and exceptional use from FirstSearch databases.

For this fourth column in the IT I‐V (information technology interview) series participants actively engaged or interested in the metadata harvesting protocol of the open archives initiative were interviewed. The metadata harvesting initiative targets information generally inaccessible through standard browser searches, such as information stored in databases or within library online public access catalogs. We selected this topic as an information technology‐based initiative with the potential to provide information about the usefulness of metadata: in particular the Dublin Core metadata standard, but also about other metadata standards, as the protocol design supports community‐specific schemas as well. The group interviewed represents developers, commercial information providers, funders, and members of the scholarly publishing community. Along with learning about the interests and concerns of each of these stakeholders and about specific applications of the protocol, we identify potential questions that will ultimately need to be addressed.

The purpose of this paper is to detail a low-cost, low-maintenance publishing strategy aimed at unlocking the value of Linked Data collections held by libraries, archives and museums (LAMs).

The shortcomings of commonly used Linked Data publishing approaches are identified, and the current lack of substantial collections of Linked Data exposed by LAMs is considered. To improve on the discussed status quo, a novel approach for publishing Linked Data is proposed and demonstrated by means of an archive of DBpedia versions, which is queried in combination with other Linked Data sources.

The authors show that the approach makes publishing Linked Data archives easy and affordable, and supports distributed querying without causing untenable load on the Linked Data sources.

The proposed approach significantly lowers the barrier for publishing, maintaining, and making Linked Data collections queryable. As such, it offers the potential to substantially grow the distributed network of queryable Linked Data sources. Because the approach supports querying without causing unacceptable load on the sources, the queryable interfaces are expected to be more reliable, allowing them to become integral building blocks of robust applications that leverage distributed Linked Data sources.

The novel publishing strategy significantly lowers the technical and financial barriers that LAMs face when attempting to publish Linked Data collections. The proposed approach yields Linked Data sources that can reliably be queried, paving the way for applications that leverage distributed Linked Data sources through federated querying.

This paper presents a high‐level overview of linking, with a consideration of what can and can not be accomplished with present‐day technology and products. The intended purpose is to help readers make informed decisions about what a full text and linking product mix can bring to your institution.

The role of librarians in the development and promotion of institutional repositories is discussed. It is presented as a continuation of their existing functions of acquiring, organising and making readily available the resources needed by academic staff and students. Library staff are collaborating with IT staff and academics to disseminate scholarly material and learning objects emanating from their institutions. The Open Archives Initiative and its Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, which provide the technical structure to support the repositories and enable their interoperability for searching purposes, are discussed. The benefits to institutions and their staffs are also reported. The skills needed by library staff are outlined, as well as the pitfalls and problems they may face in persuading academic staff of the virtues of institutional repositories.

With the increase in the use of electronic information services in libraries, and in particular with the dramatic increase in the use of electronic journals, there is an urgent need by libraries for solutions that link the disparate information resources in a meaningful way for the end user and that optimize the use of these resources. Such linking solutions are now available for libraries, supported and assisted by the emergence of new standards such as the OpenURL and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Linking solutions built around these standards include SFX and CrossRef. Demonstrates how these different solutions, and the underlying standards, interact to meet library needs.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the benefits of integrating a digital preservation system into the library as a way to ensure uninterrupted access to e‐journals and e‐books.

This paper introduces the concept of a digital preservation system, and shows how it can made to benefit end‐users through a simple integration with the online pubic access catalogue (OPAC), to ensure continuous access to a library's e‐journals and e‐books.

A digital preservation system ensures that libraries continue to have access to on‐line assets once a subscription is cancelled or the publisher discontinues access. It extends the traditional library model of print journals and books on the shelf to encompass digital media. Providing end‐user access to preserved content can be simplified by integrating the online public access catalogue (OPAC) with the digital preservation system through a link resolver. End‐users can access the preserved content using an interface they already know, and the integration guards against publisher outages to provide continuous access to the library's digital collection.

The techniques shown in this paper can be extended to integrating digital preservation systems with other library systems.

This paper illustrates a simple way for the library to ensure that end‐users have un‐interrupted access to digital assets, even if it is necessary to cancel a subscription or there is a temporary disruption in service from the publisher.