[CODE4LIB] NY Times Bookmarklet

[Van Mil, James (vanmiljf)]

Hi everyone! (first post!)

We've been getting lots of feedback at my library about the problem with the NY 
Times paywall and the lack of institutional access to their website, but we do 
have a subscription to a Proquest database which includes all current content 
that is included in the print addition.

However, every article at the web version of the NY Times that was also 
published in the print version includes a reference to the article from the 
print edition, including date, page number, and print version title 
(information which is all still accessible in the page source when the paywall 
blocks access). Additionally, the Proquest database has very clear search 
syntax.

So, I wrote a bookmarklet to check whether the article was published in print 
and to open a new browser window to search for the article at Proquest. (I know 
that there are other work-arounds to the paywall, but I'm interested in one 
that our library could ethically promote.)

The code for the bookmarklet is short, so I've included it below. I'd like to 
add the option to search the headline in Google News for any articles that 
aren't available in the print version, and I need to write some title-string 
sanitization to deal with some funky punctuation in the occasional headline. If 
anyone has any other feedback, I'd love to hear it. (And I apologize both for 
the lack of commenting (bookmarklets don't seem to have room for this) and for 
the lack of style (I started learned Javascript yesterday).)

Thanks!
James

James Van Mil
Collections & Electronic Resources Librarian
Electronic Resources Department
University of Cincinnati Libraries
PO Box 210033
Cincinnati OH 45221-0033
Telephone: (513) 556-1410
vanmi...@ucmail.uc.edu<mailto:vanmi...@ucmail.uc.edu>



javascript:
(
function()
    { var source = document.documentElement.innerHTML;
      var regex1 = /A version of this article appeared in print on 
((January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)
 ([1-2][0-9]|3[0-1]|0?[1-9]), ((19|20)[0-9][0-9])), on page (\w+) of the New 
York edition with the headline:(.*)</g;
      var match = regex1.exec(source);
         if (match)
         {
              var articleDate = new Date(match[2] + ' ' + match[3] + ', ' + 
match[4]);
              var articleYear = articleDate.getFullYear();
              var articleMonth = articleDate.getMonth()+1;
              var articleDay = articleDate.getDate();
              var regex2 = /([A-Z]+)(\d+)/g;
              var pageMatch = regex2.exec(match[6]);
              
window.open('https://proxy.libraries.uc.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=305&SQ=issn%2803624331%29%20and%20ti%28'
 + match[7] + '%29%20and%20pdn%28' + articleMonth + '%2F' + articleDay + '%2F' 
+ articleYear + '%29%20and%20startpage%28' + pageMatch[1] + '.' + pageMatch[2] 
+ '%29');
         }
         else
         {
              alert("This article hasn't been published in the print version of 
the NY Times and isn't accessible through the UC Libraries.");
         }
    }

)
();