SFX or Find It! and the CitationLinker
I attended a talk about the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s use of SFX/Find It! technology. Harvard also uses this technology. I’ve seen the icon in several places, but I haven’t played with it to know what it does. It’s actually an incredibly powerful tool because it quickly connects searchers with similar items in other databases. Perhaps I find the citation for an article in one database. If I click the logo, a search goes through the other databases that are part of this function (that varies by vendor and library/campus/installation) and tells me where else I might be able to find the article. If I’m looking for the full text, for example, and the database I’m searching in doesn’t have it, I might be able to find which database has the full text quickly and easily this way.
It can also quickly give users an idea of what other databases index journals they’re interested in or cover certain subject areas.
The Citation Linker allows someone to quickly locate an article or journal if they know what they’re looking for. Instead of trying to figure out which database indexes the journal and might have the article or beginning a search with a visit to Ulrich’s Periodicals Index, which lists which databases include a periodical, someone can just start with Citation Linker and go directly to what they need–if the search is successful.
