StaffGuide: Electronic Serials

Electronic Serials

Broken URL Reporting

Broken urls are a common occurrence. They will be brought to the attention of eSerials either by the url checker, the print serials team or an error report by patrons via Libanswers.

When the print serials team discovers a broken URL link, it is reported via the Slack channel, #reportedurls. The report in Slack automatically triggers the creation of a card onto the Trello board, "eSerials Problem Reportings." See "Problem URLs/Holdings Questions Reported Via Slack/Trello" on the Trello eSerials Workflows page for information regarding how reports are tracked and resolved.

Broken URLs New URL Search

Follow these steps to fix broken urls:

1. Verify the url is indeed broken.

2. Check Serials Solutions to see if they have fixed the url already. If so, edit the coverage and update the url in the bib if needed.

3. If it is not already updated in Serials Solutions, you must search for a working url. Try to strip the broken url down to it's most basic form and search from there. Identify areas of a homepage where publications might exist. For journals and newsletters, try looking for the word “publications”, “press”, or “what’s new”. For annual reports, try looking in the “About us” or “Investor relations” section. Use the “Search” boxes of the main sites to find a publication.

4. Report the new url to Serials Solutions. Edit the coverage and update the url in the bib if needed.

5. If you can still not find the url, preform a Google Search. Ensure you are locating an equivalent url i.e. replacing the publisher web site url with the appropriate publisher web site url and not with a url from a vendor or that might be running through the proxy server. Always evaluate the credibility and appropriateness of a web site before including it as holdings in the catalog. Report the new url to Serials Solutions. Edit the coverage and update the url in the bib if needed.

6. It may also be possible to find a working url from the OCLC record. If found, Report the new url to Serials Solutions. Edit the coverage and update the url in the bib if needed.

7. Add the following 9xx notes when appropriate:

993 SER PROC Broken url removed 85641|uhttp://somejournal.someplace.org (Date, initials)

993 SER PROC  Url fixed (date, initials)