Of particular interest to staff maintaining research guides and instructional web pages are the following instructions from Fred Martz for embedding Orbis searches. The concept of embedded links might be new to you (I think only a few sophisticated selectors included links to WebPac in their guides). You can do some interesting things with these links. For example, an embedded search in a bibliography can instantly generate an up-to-date list of titles in Orbis related to a particular topic.
You can see examples of embedded links in a subject guide at:
http://www.library.yale.edu/rsc/german/authors.html
-- look under "Finding Books at Yale." Of course, you don't have to spell out the search in the link, but doing so might have some pedagogical value!
Fred advises replacing old embedded links to WebPac. These will continue to work into the new year, but the old WebPac is now officially obsolete and linking to it will probably create confusion among users.
-Marianna, on behalf of the CrossPlex design group
To create a direct link to an Orbis search from an external (non-CrossPlex) web site:
Link: a href=
"http://mvsorbis.library.yale.edu:82/XWEBCONV/ORBA/XSMBWEBM/ORBXTRNL.STR?
CONVTOKEN=INIT&HOW=h&SEARCH4=sssss"
Replace 'h' in the HOW query value with the appropriate search type letter (t, a, s, so, k, cl, etc.)
Replace 'sssss' in the SEARCH4 query value with the appropriate search string, just as you would enter it in the standard Orbis OPAC.
For example, to search for the subject 'apples' the query would look and work like the following:
To search for a specific catalog record, such as the William and Mary Quarterly, use a keyword search by Orbis record number:
To search by ISSN (for hook to serial holdings) construct the search as follows: