Outbound searches provide administrators the ability to expand your site's search capabilities by allowing users to search for content in various catalogs or services beyond the scope of Stacks. This provides a seamless experience for users, giving them access to a broader range of search results while still utilizing the main search bar in Stacks.
Configuring Outbound Searches
To configure an outbound search, you will need to understand the components of a URL to identify and enter the appropriate information into Stacks. Before seeing how to configure an outbound search, let's take a look and an example of how to deconstruct a URL.
Deconstructing a URL
For this example we'll use the search results URL from a Google Scholar search using the search term "engineering" below. Note: Parameters are separated by the ampersand (&) symbol.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=engineering&btnG=
- Identify the Base URL
- This is the protocol and domain name of the external catalog, for this example the base URL is: https://scholar.google.com/
- Identify the Search Parameters
- Search parameters are the components of the URL that are directly before your search keyword(s), but exclude the domain. For this example, the search parameters would be: scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=
- Search parameters are the components of the URL that are directly before your search keyword(s), but exclude the domain. For this example, the search parameters would be: scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=
- Identify Extra Parameters
- The extra parameters are shown in the portion of the URL directly after the search results, in this example the extra parameters are: btnG=
- The extra parameters are shown in the portion of the URL directly after the search results, in this example the extra parameters are: btnG=
- Identify any Fragments
- Fragments are what follow a hashtag (#) towards the end of the URL. When a user visits the URL, the browser will load and scroll to or focus on the section of the page with the fragment. Note: in the example above there are no fragments
This is just a single example that explains how to deconstruct the URL, some catalogs may include URLs that are rearranged in a way that might take some time to get right.
Configuring an Outbound Search
- From the Dashboard, click Integrations
- Click Outbound Searches
- Select the Type from the drop-down list, then click Add
- Follow the steps from the Deconstructing a URL section above to populate the fields on the form
- Note: some search types (Koha, OCLC, Polaris, Sierra) may have some of these fields automatically populated. Also, there may be scenarios where you are not including extra parameters or fragments
- Click the Save button to apply your changes