How to create a general electronic service to search by title in another library or database

In this blog post we will show how to create a general electronic service to search by title in “National Taiwan University”.  This will enable the end user in Primo to click a link and automatically search “National Taiwan University” for the title of the record in Primo to which he or she has navigated.

The same flow used here for “National Taiwan University” and title can be used for other libraries, databases and websites and also for other bibliographic fields.

STEP ONE

Identify the name of the title field as it appears in the Context Object and can therefore be used in the URL template of the General Electronic Service.   See How to identify the field name syntax for an Open URL Template in a General Electronic Service for details of how to identify the field name. It is called “rft.btitle”.

STEP TWO

Identify the syntax needed to search a title in “National Taiwan University”.

If we were to search National Taiwan University Primo  for title “Introduction to library science” in the Advanced search as follows:

Then the URL syntax would be:

https://ntu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Introduction%20to%20library%20science,AND&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=MyInstitution&vid=886NTU_INST:886NTU_INST&lang=en&mode=advanced&offset=0

This means that the syntax is

https://ntu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Text of the Title,AND&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=MyInstitution&vid=886NTU_INST:886NTU_INST&lang=en&mode=advanced&offset=0

This means that in the URL template we can put:

https://ntu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,{rft.btitle},AND&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=MyInstitution&vid=886NTU_INST:886NTU_INST&lang=en&mode=advanced&offset=0

STEP THREE

Create a new General Electronic Service as follows

1. Navigate to “Configuration > Fulfillment > Discovery Interface Display Logic > General Electronic Services”
2. Click “Add Service”
3. Stay in “Service Details” tab
4. Fill in as follows:
   1. Service name = National Taiwan University (or whatever you think is appropriate)
   2. Service Description = Search for title in National Taiwan University (or whatever you think is appropriate)
   3. Public name = Search for title in National Taiwan University (or whatever you think is appropriate)
   4. Public Note = This will search for the title in the National Taiwan University library catalog (or whatever you think is appropriate)
   5. Is this a Document Delivery/ILL service? = Yes
      1. We will discuss this parameter more later.  Suffice to say for now:
         1. No = the link will display on the bottom in the “links”
         2. Yes = the link will display on the top under “Get It” or “View Online”
   6. Display location = Getit, viewit & How To Getit
   7. URL template = https://ntu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,{rft.btitle},AND&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=MyInstitution&vid=886NTU_INST:886NTU_INST&lang=en&mode=advanced&offset=0
      1. This is the URL template we made above by looking at
         1. How to identify the field name syntax for an Open URL Template in a General Electronic Service to know we need “frt.au” for the field name
         2. Searching the VIAF Virtual International Authority File to get the URL syntax
   8. Enable without login = Yes

Here is how it looks:

STEP FOUR

Make a “Service Availability Rule” to determine when the service will appear.

We will make a rule to state “If the “rft.btitle” field exists then make the General Electronic Service appear”.

Switch to the “Service Availability Rules” tab and click “Add rule”

Give the rule name “If record has rft.btitle then display” (or whatever you think is appropriate)

Click “Add Parameter” and define that rft.btitle is not empty

Define that for the above condition the display is “true” (meaning it will display)

Note that the default rule is to not display.  This means it will first check the above rule “If record has rft.btitle then display”.  If that rule fails then it will go to the default.

Here we check the default rule:

And we see that it states “Do not display”.

STEP FIVE

Test the rule.  Search for something in Primo and click “Available at” or “Available Online”

See the “Search for title in National Taiwan University” link.  Under this link we see the Public Note “This will search for the title in the National Taiwan University library catalog“.

Note that the link is under the “View Online” and above the “Details”.  (We will talk more about the location of the link soon).

Click the link “Search for title in National Taiwan University”.

Arrive to “National Taiwan University”with the search term (the title of the resource we came from) already filled in and retrieved.

This means that the General Electronic Service has worked.

STEP SIX

Note that above the link “Search for the author in VIAF” link was under the “View Online” and above the “Details”.

This is becasue in the general Electronic Service we defined “Is this a Document Delivery/ILL service” as “Yes”.

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