Proquest links (was Re: Santa Claus is Comin' to Town...)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 12/14/05, Mullins, Bill <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> On another OT:  It does no good at all to paste links from ProQuest
> Historical Newspapers into your posts.  They are only good for the
> computer and session you have originally found them in.  We can't open
> them.  And they really clutter up an email.

What I've been doing is extracting the Document ID # from the article
I want to link to and then putting it at the end of this URL:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=309&VName=HNP&did=

So, for instance, this unwieldy and unusable link (given by Barry)...

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=3&did=76746243&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=6&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=HNP&TS=1134575760&clientId
=65882

...can be converted into this compact and stable URL:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=309&VName=HNP&did=76746243

This should work for anyone with access to Proquest, though if it's in
a publication that's outside of your subscription range you'll only
see a description of the article (headline, publication, date, page
number) rather than the PDF of the article itself.

For Proquest publications beyond the Historical Newspapers database,
the "VName" needs to be changed, e.g. "PQD" for "Proquest Direct":

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=309&VName=PQD&did=59655819


--Ben Zimmer