I was asked to forward this reply to the list.

Jeanne Towle <jtowle@rrcc.mb.ca> wrote:

> We are currently using Netminder's "URL Minder" to notify us when the
> URL of an e-journal that we have catalogued has either moved or died.
> It will allow us to ask to be notified when there is any change to the
> sight, but we do not use that feature for serials, since it would then
> notify us anytime a new issue was added.
>
> We are concerned that this method will not allow us to keep track of
> "Title changes" and the like.
>
> Has anyone found a "URL minder" that they prefer?

We are investigating how to monitor ejournals, both in order to record
new issues that are made available, and also to identify changes to
URLs, jcontents, and titles.

We are trying out link-checker software to identify URLs that change.
Right now we are using "Linkbot"
(http://tetranetsoftware.com/linkbot-info.htm) which gives reasonably
reliable results, but the biggest problem we encounter is that during
normal working hours the response time is very slow so links may be
identified as having no server when actually it's just the Internet
connection that is bad.

We are also currently doing a trial for 50 ejournals of checking in each
issue that becomes available.  One of the staff members in our serials
check-in section accesses each of the 50 ejournal sites manually once a
week to record new issues in our Innopac catalogue.  I am looking at
software that automatically monitors page changes and gives a
notification, hoping that it would alert us to the presence of a new
issue on the journal's web page.  I looked at "URL-minder" but its
documentation indicated that it has a retrieval time-out which may mean
that slow servers would not work, and pages that require a password
would also probably not work.  For those reasons it did not seem
suitable for us.  I am currently trying "Tierra Highlights2"
(http://www.tierra.com) which looks very promising.  It does not send an
e-mail notification like "URL-minder" but is live on your computer and
has a number of customizable features.

There are drawbacks with any automated approach.  A link-checker will
not identify sites that have moved and left a redirection page behind
them.  Neither a link-checker nor a web page monitor that notifies of
changes will alert to changes in titles and content.  Despite some
investigation I have not found any software that addresses all the
problems.

Another activity we do is to maintain a "Hotlinks" site which presents
an organized selected list of Internet sites.  Because we have written
short annotations for each link, I have staff manually check the pages
of links to verify URLs and to identify annotations that need to be
changed.  For our ejournals we may end up doing a similar manual
process, because until Internet technology can provide tools that will
give us everything we need (if ever), it's the only way to really ensure
accuracy.

 ----------
Diana Winninger  --  Manager, Non-Serials Selection/Cataloguing
Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI)
Ottawa, Ont.
diana.winninger@nrc.ca
phone (613) 998-5692
fax (613) 952-8245