4. Future goal: integration of the Fielding-created web-based dissertations catalog with Current Research @ Fielding Graduate Institute

At present, the web-based dissertations catalog at http://www.fielding.edu/library/dissertations/ and UMI‘s Current Research @ Fielding Graduate Institute complement one another for Fielding users, with the former allowing for queries by academic program and being updated earlier, and the latter offering dissertations‘ abstracts, full text (going back to 1997), and UMI subject headings. However, there is no connection between the two resources; they have to be searched independently from one another. Fielding‘s goal is to create hyperlinks^<5> from its web-based dissertations catalog to Current Research @ Fielding Graduate Institute for each dissertation that is represented in both systems. This hyperlink would appear with each record of the output screen, a sample of which is shown (displaying five records) in . The common element between the two systems would be UMI‘s publication number, e.g., „9962162“ in the example in .

Figure 7: Partial sample record from UMI‘s Current Research @ Fielding Graduate Institute database.

UMI has already graciously agreed to provide a data file that will allow Fielding to merge these publication numbers into its own database of Fielding dissertations. That will allow for the generation of hyperlinks like, for example, http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/fielding/fullcit?p9962162, which would link directly to the record shown in .

Footnotes:

<5>

Displayed at least when the catalog is viewed by a Fielding user who has been authenticated as such by logging into FELIX, and is therefore known to be entitled to access to Fielding‘s institutional subscription to Current Research @ Fielding Graduate Institute. Since most of Fielding‘s users (students and faculty) access its online resources remotely, the hyperlinks are routed through an EZproxy (http://www.usefulutilities.com/) server.

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