The importance of discovery is often brought up in academic settings, but ensuring access is just as vital for connecting patrons with materials. For resources from EBSCO’s Holdings & Links Management (HLM) record service, access takes the form of linking URLs. The details of these links are often dependent on the host, and access issues can arise in collections large and small. The number of links and potential problems scales upwards as an institution adds more collections to HLM. Manually testing URLs is a proactive method of ensuring access, as patrons finding a nonfunctional link may just move on to another resource instead of submitting a ticket and waiting for a resolution. This presentation is concerned with breaking down different types of access issues The University of Alabama has encountered and exploring tools used for more efficiently and precisely troubleshooting access problems in HLM records as well as the importance of communication with electronic resources personnel from a metadata perspective in addressing access problems and establishing more streamlined workflows.
