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How to Make Persistent Links to Articles

Many faculty and students want to put links to articles into their online courses, emails, projects, and other communications. Most URLs for online articles work for a short period - 20 minutes to a day - then become invalid. In addition, the URLs usually don't work for off campus students who will be asked to log in with some unknown username and password.

The Libraries' Citation Linker can help you create a persistent link to online articles and solves the off-campus access problem. The Citation Linker lets you enter an article citation, creates a menu of full text options, provides a persistent link to the menu, and prompts the user to enter their library ID if needed.

Using Citation Linker

Create persistent links using the Citation Linker form.  A link to the form is also found on the Online Journals page.

  1. Fill in the form and click Go.
Example Citation Linker
Article title
Journal title
Contains Begins with Exact match
Date
Volume Issue
Start page End page
Author
Last name First name Initials
   
  1. An SFX menu will come up with full text options listed in the top.
  2. Try the full text links to make sure they work as you expect.
  3. Go back to the SFX menu and click on "More Information and Services".
  4. Click on Show a citation and persistent link.


Example SFX Menu
Colapse list of basic services  Options for Getting the Text
Full text may be available from:
  CSA SAGE Communication Studies
Year: Volume: Issue: Start Page:
 
UCF Libraries Catalog
Search by ISSN or ISBN in the UCF Library Catalog  
Search by Journal Title in the UCF Library Catalog  
Colapse list of advanced services  More Information and Services
Save this Citation
Save citation into EndNote, ProCite, or Reference Manager  
Save citation into RefWorks  
Show a citation and persistent link.  
  1. A window will open which shows a citation to the article in MLA style. Set the citation style you prefer.
  2. Copy the citation and the URL, or just the URL, depending on what you need.

Example Citation and persistent link

Select the citation style of your choice and click 'Go':

Managing the Long URL

The default SFX URL is very long and ugly.  You can either hide the long URL by turning it into a link on a web page, or you can use TinyURL. 

Creating Links

You can use the article title as the link text by putting a few simple tags (in red below) around the URL and title in HTML:

<a href="http://sfx.fcla.edu/ucf?ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8;ctx_id=10_1;ctx_tim=
2006-5-12T13%3A6%3A28EDT;ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsfxit.com%3Acitation;
rft.atitle=%09Long%20Ago%20and%20Far%20Away%3A%20How%20US%20Newspapers%20
Construct%20Racial%20Oppression;rft.aufirst=Hemant;rft.aulast=Shah;rft.epage=278;rft.genre=article;
rft.issue=3;rft.jtitle=journalism;rft.spage=259;rft.volume=5;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3
Amtx%3Aarticle;sfx.title_search=exact;url_ctx_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx;url_ver
=Z39.88-2004">Long Ago and Far Away: How US Newspapers Construct Racial Oppression.</a>

The link looks like this on a web page:

Long Ago and Far Away: How US Newspapers Construct Racial Oppression

Using TinyURL

If you plan on posting the URL in any visible way, I suggest producing a TinyURL:

  1. Go to http://tinyurl.com
  2. Paste the long URL into the form and click "Make Tiny URL"
  3. Copy and use the tiny URL and use it where ever you need.
The URL for the article above gets turned into:
http://tinyurl.com/f7w3y

Contact athena@mail.ucf.edu or Ask A Librarian if you have questions or want help.

Last Updated: June 03, 2009