Target parser for NEXIS UK

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Last Updated: May 24, 2010 12:29

Description
This is a target parser for the NEXIS UK service, which is at present unsupported by the SFX KB.
Author: Matthew Phillips
Additional author(s):
Institution: University of Dundee
Year: 2010
License: BSD style
Short description: Use, modification and distribution of the code are permitted provided the copyright notice, list of conditions and disclaimer appear in all related material.
Link to terms: [Detailed license terms]
Skill required for using this code:
basic

State
Programming language
Software requirements
Download
Installation instructions
Comments

State

Stable

Programming language

Perl

Software requirements

None

Download

The target parser is contained in the zip file NEXISUK.zip.

Installation instructions

Unpack the zip file and place the NEXISUK.pm file in the LEXIS subdirectory of the target parsers location for your SFX instance. For example, on our server this is located in /exlibris/sfx_ver/sfx_version_3/sfxlcl3/lib/Parsers/TargetParser/LEXIS

As there is no suitable target, we use the LEXISNEXIS_ACADEMIC target (a service which is sold in the USA, not the UK) and manually turn on the relevant newspaper object portfolios. To use the new target parser, go to the target services list for the target and edit the getFullText target service. Change the Target Parser field to LEXIS::NEXISUK to use the new parser. Leave the displayer as LEXIS::NEXIS. Our Parse Param shows "url = http://www.lexisnexis.com".

The NEXISUK.pm file is based on the NEXIS.pm file in the same directory. The essential modifications are to construct the URLs correctly for the NEXIS UK service. In general, the string "AC00NBGenSrch" is replaced by "GB00NBGenSrch".

There are also a number of improvements made to improve the chances of SFX linking through to the correct articles in NEXIS UK. The method SFX uses involves performing a search in the NEXIS UK interface. To maximise the chances of finding a hit, I have changed the way that the search terms are constructed, based on real-life problems linking through to newspaper articles.

For example, punctuation is stripped from the search terms, as this can cause difficulties. Subtitles and over-long article titles are trimmed. The parser copes better in cases where the author, article title, or date is not supplied. The syntax for date searching is corrected. Improvements along these lines would be useful to incorporate in the official NEXIS.pm parser which is used for the equivalent service available in the USA.

Comments

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