ANU Proxify: A tool to improve online research at ANU
Email: benjamin.marwick@anu.edu.au
The
Google Scholar search engine is handy for searching for online material hosted by many different academic publishers. The main limitation is that it's not possible to directly click-through to view the full-text of subscription-only journal articles. This feature solves that problem.
Searching for a way around this limitation, I wrote to Mark Huppert (Web Development Coordinator & Integrated Library Management System Coordinator, ANU Library) who quickly responded by writing this javascript
bookmarklet to allow ANU users to directly access the full-text content of articles found using Google Scholar.
The example given here is for Google Scholar but this tool will "proxify" links (re-direct them through the ANU Reverse Proxy System) on any web page. This can speed access to other online publishers that ANU subscribes to, for example, Nature, Science and Antiquity.
| Getting ANU Proxify |
Using ANU Proxify |
- Get the Firefox web browser (I haven't tried it with any others)
- Right-click on this underlined text: ANU Proxify
- Click "Bookmark this Link...", check the location where you want it and click "OK". That's it.
- An optional step is to bookmark this page or the bookmarklet itself at an online bookmarking service such as del.icio.us, furl, spurl, and so on. This means you can use ANU Proxify when you're not using your own computer (though you'll have to add it into the browser of the computer you are using).
|
- Go to Google Scholar
- Enter your search terms and hit enter
- Click on your "ANU Proxify" bookmark
- The javascript creates a popup broswer window with all the links on the Google Scholar page re-routed through the ANU reverse proxy. The window will be hidden behind the main one, so look for it (it's plain text, not pretty but it works).
- Click on a search result of interest and you will be redirected to the ANU Libary reverse proxy page where you should enter your ANU ID and password and click "Go". The PDF will then appear in the browser window.
|
