The MPG/SFX link resolver bases on the OpenURL standard which defines a way to transport bibliographic metadata via an HTTP request. This standard made context-sensitive linking possible and helped us to create many new services within in the digital library. On the other hand, OpenURLs tend to become very long – because information providers wish to deliver as much detail as possible – and are therefore often difficult to re-use, e.g. by copying it into the body of an e-mail.
But solutions are available for everything: A fellow developer just recently released a new service to make long URLs tiny and we integrated this service into the MPG/SFX menu. Therefore, you should now find a short URL at the bottom of each MPG/SFX menu:
This URL will take you back to the MPG/SFX menu requested with the original OpenURL and we hope you will like it!
Are these tinyurls supposed to be durable URLs, i.e. to be used, for example, on webpages to create permanent links, or are tinyurls temporary URL wrappers, to make them “portable”?
@Erik: The main use case of these sfx tinyurls is the portability. Anyway, we will also try to keep them durable, but cannot provide guarantee for the long-term.