Cataloging Links and Online Resources

Do you want to include online resources in your catalog? It’s easy!

Why would you catalog links?

After all, you could just create an Explore pane or Bulletin Board for recipes, an Explore pane (or Bulletin Board) for Free eBooks, an Explore pane (ditto) for National Geographic videos, and so on. 
However, adding the link as an item in your catalog (with subjects!) means it will come up in Researcher search results.

Often you can link to the web page that then leads to text content or a PDF; other times you can directly link to or download a PDF. To ensure the ongoing integrity of your catalog links, you may want to download the PDFs and host them on your own server, and link to them from there. Note any updates to the original files will not be reflected in the PDFs you downloaded. 

How to catalog links

First, before you add items, you need an appropriate policy so no one tries to place a hold on or check out a link.

Create the right policy

1. In Tools, go to Policies.
2. On the Item Policy side, Add a new policy.
3. Name it something like Link or Web Page.
4. Under the Check Out tab, set the Transaction Period drop-down menu to No Loan Period.
5. Under the Other tab, uncheck the option to Allow Hold Requests.
6. Under the Other tab, check the box to Show as ONLINE in Researcher.*
7. Save the policy.

*This will put an ONLINE tag on the cover art in Researcher 

Catalog a link

1. In Item Management, click the plus (+) icon, choose Title, and hit <enter> to add the item manually (without going through title assistant).
2. Fill in the Title and author.
3. Change the Policy to ‘Web Page’ or an equivalent.
4. Change the Medium to ‘electronic resource’ or an equivalent.
5. Fill in the Call Number (e.g. LIN GB HOM) and any other applicable information.
6. Go to the Other tab, and click Add at the bottom to add a Link.
7. Fill in the Description and the URL.
8. Save the item.
9. Don’t add copies! Since it’s an online resource, there are no copy limits.

Add subject tags

1. In the item recordc go to the gear menu and toggle MARC view.
2. Locate your 6xx tags (e.g. 650, 651).
3. Add new fields or new subfields (e.g. 650_z Greece).
4. Save the record.

Now your patrons can find this resources when they search your catalog.