A good start to 2020 but there’s a lot to do

We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone that took part in the first GetFTR Advisory Group meeting of the year. Input from the group will be incredibly important as we develop GetFTR, ensuring the perspectives of the various stakeholder groups we have are represented and their feedback is carefully considered. If there’s one thing we realize, it’s that we don’t have all of the answers.

Welcoming new additions to the GetFTR Advisory Board

When GetFTR was announced in December 2019, one of the key pieces of feedback we received was that the librarian community needed to be part of the Advisory Group. This made sense to us and we’re delighted that Elaine Westbrooks, Librarian and Vice Provost of University Libraries at North Carolina University Chapel Hill, and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Professor as well as Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both agreed to be part of the group and attended the first meeting of 2020.

Continuing from last year, we are pleased to have a wide variety of industry-leading organizations represented on the board, including the American Society of Civil Engineers, Digital Science, the IEEE, Silverchair, and Third Iron. Our first meeting was very productive, and the GetFTR team are reviewing the feedback we received and seeing how we translate it into tangible actions.

Clarity on GetFTR and library link resolvers

Understandably, we’ve also received feedback about library link resolvers and the potential impact GetFTR will have on them. We wanted to hopefully provide some clarity on this.

In short, library link resolvers provide the ability for librarians to customize the links presented to users of a discovery service. Any discovery service that has already implemented a library link resolver will be able to decide how best to incorporate GetFTR links with link resolver links. It’s our hope that GetFTR may ease the burden of maintaining library link resolvers, such as the manual entry of library holdings. We’re open to feedback from discovery service vendors and the library community on this point though.

A commitment to open and transparent communication

We’re committed to open and transparent communication on the development of GetFTR. We’re working out what conferences and events we can attend to have these conversations directly with as many of you as possible. In the meantime, please do send through any queries or suggestions you have to joinus@getfulltextresearch.com.

Todd Toler

Chair, GetFTR Advisory Group

Vice President, Product Strategy & Partnerships at Wiley