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Table of Contents
EBSCOhost Database Maintenance
Management of content in EBSCOhost is not quite the same as managing content in EDS.
Also See
Finding Indexed and Full Text Content
EBSCOhost indexes a wide variety of content, but not all records in EBSCOhost databases will link to full text. The journal Podiatry Review for instance has full text from 9/1/2009 to present, but has metadata indexed from 1/1/2008 to present. This can be found in the publication page in EBSCOhost. Click on the pub. title in the advanced record to find full holdings information. What is indexed versus what has full text is based on marketing and sales decisions by EBSCO. Title lists for ehost databases can be found here.
Native Linking
Primary linking for EBSCOhost databases is through direct links to PDF/HTML (Smart Links) and Linked Full Text (Smart Links Plus). Anything else is powered by CustomLinks (which we have chosen not to enable in EBSCOhost) and the link resolver CustomLink.
Profiles
We have several profiles for ehost databases. The most important is “EBSCOhost Web (ehost) - ehost” which covers all our EBSCOhost databases. There are other profiles which are named for individual databases but sometimes contain many more than that one resource. “CINAHL and CINAHL Complete (cinplus) - ehost) has almost every ehost database turned on, despite the fact that we don't actually use the profile and CINAHL is managed in ehost. Bob has said that this does not make sense to continue, although if we wanted to do discipline specific profiles ala Kat then it would. However, they are not being maintained and no one is using them Business Search, Cab Abstracts, Inspec Plus, MLA International, Business Book, and PsycInfo are getting hits, but not substantially. Unsure where these URLs are actually being used…See EBSCO_DatabaseUsageReport from Oct. 2019 in the EDS Directory on DRMS.
SFX Linking
The main method of linking after native linking is through the SFX UMLinks. The CustomLink “SFX Link Resolver (Main User Group) EHOST” is attached to the “EBSCOhost Web (ehost) - ehost” profile in the Admin. It is joined by a specific CustomLink (SFX Link Resolver (GeoRef Only) UMAAH) for SFX linking through GeoRef. Bob has stated that he sees no need for this CL to exist. Apparently it only searches GeoRef, but it doesn't display because of the rankings in ehost and the main SFX CL is working fine.
These CLs cascade down to all EBSCOhost databases, regardless of if they have a specific profile. For instance, CINAHL has a profile with no CustomLinks but still uses SFX linking. These CLs are set to “Always Show,” with the secondary setting to suppress the CL based on the “Hide if Full Text” toggle. The local collection “EDRS Exclude (umaah.edex)” is selected, but is being ignored since the CL is set to always show if there is no other full text. Bob is unsure why the local collection would have ever been selected.
