> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Mang Sun
> Sent: 30 May, 2006 09:32
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] Monthly newsletter of Table of Content?
>
> We don' like to manually copy and paste TOCs from Journals'
> sites into a webpage. However, most of them don't provide RSS
> while some provide newsletter services.
>
> We are wondering what kinds of techniques could be handy?
> DOM,SAS ? Or is there any automation tool for this task? Some
> different ideas?

I think you will need to use a number of techniques.  Using an
XML DOM will probably work the least.  Many Web sites put out
HTML, that many times is not valid and the few sites that do
put out XHTML may also not be valid XML.  You may find some
commonality with the sites you are looking at, but it's hard
to say without looking at your list of sites.

What would be nice to have, would be an OpenURL 1.0 service that
returned an RSS feed for the Journals you are looking at providing
a TOC to.  That way anyone could use your OpenURL service to get
an RSS feed of the Journal's TOC.

I proposed a service like the one you are trying to build to our
FirstSearch development group in November of 2003.  They were in
a better position to construct the service since many times they
receive the journal's TOC from the publisher in electronic form.
Unfortunately, there were other business priorities at the time
and the proposal met a silent death.  The following was from the
proposal:

"Business Problem:
The local library staff wants to provide a service to their patrons
to push journal article information to them.  Here is an overview
of how the process would work.  A library patron subscribes, in
their RSS aggregator, to an RSS document for a journal, e.g.
Technology Review, on their local library portal.  Each period,
e.g. week or month, the RSS document contains the table of contents
(TOC) entries for the journal.  The patron clicks on a journal
article link that allows them to view the article's full text
through the local library's portal."

Implicit in the statement: "The patron clicks on a journal article
link that allows them to view the article's full text through the
local library's portal." is a link to an OpenURL resolver.  However,
an OpenURL 1.0 service could also be used to serve the RSS document
to the library patron.


Andy.

Andrew Houghton, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
http://www.oclc.org/about/
http://www.oclc.org/research/staff/houghton.htm