"Putting on the ritz" (1921)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 5/9/06, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>
> In general, it isn't productive to put links to the citations from the
> subscription databases, anyway.  They often are session-specific.  A
> link to an article in ProQuest can't be opened by anyone else, and only
> makes the post harder to read.

Indeed. Just to reiterate the discussion Bill and I had back in
December, the only vital information in a ProQuest URL is the
collection name (usually "HNP" for "Historical Newspapers Database")
and the Document ID # (after "did=" in the URL). One can create a
stable link for an article in HNP by extracting the Do. ID # and
attaching it to the end of this compact URL:

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

But since ProQuest allows advanced searching on Document ID #'s, even
this isn't strictly necessary. All that's needed is the notation "HNP
Doc ID XXXX" and whoever wants to search for the ProQuest article has
all the pertinent information.


--Ben Zimmer

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