Creating Links to Articles & Ebooks

Library databases often differ from ordinary websites; it's easy to grab links that won't work.

There are a couple reasons why working with library databases is more complicated than working with freely available websites:

1. Dynamic URLs

Research databases often focus not just on their content but on helping the user navigate huge numbers of search results. In order to help the user and create search logs for later analysis, they save search histories and other user inputs. They therefore find it expedient to store some of this information in URLs. Since the information is session-specific, these URLs sometimes cannot be used to access the same content later on.

Most database vendors have figured out ways to make individual records available via permanent links, but these links are usually not seen in the browser address bar; you need to look for them.

2. User restrictions

Most of these resources are limited to subscribing institutions. They authorize users based on their IP address. If you are on campus, your IP address is recognized by the database vendor and you are automatically authenticated. If you are entering the resource from off-campus, you need to pass through a proxy server, so that your IP address, which identifies the computer, comes from an on-campus source rather than an off-campus source. Using a proxy server actually changes the URL, so adding the proxy server information to a URL is critical to making sure a link will be usable when we're off-campus.

Listed below are the best URLs to use when linking to SCC's primary library Web pages. NOTE: If the URL will be visible (for instance, on a printed handout), you should probably leave out the "https://" part.

Research Databases page

https://library.losrios.edu/resources/databases/

Library Home page

https://scc.losrios.edu/library

OneSearch

https://caccl-lrccd.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=01CACCL_LRCCD:scc