Noreen L. Mulcahy, MLIS, AHIP
Lead Health Sciences Librarian – Technical Services
Mount Carmel Health Sciences Library
Introduction

This is an update of a 2018 review of BrowZine. To read the original review, click here.

BrowZine, a product of Third Iron, LLC, is a journal engagement platform that allows users to connect to a library’s electronic journal collection via the Web or by using iOS and Android tablets and smartphones. Titles that appear in BrowZine are based on the institution’s current subscriptions to ensure accuracy and provide full-text availability to users. The product is designed for academic and medical libraries as well as corporate centers. Users connect to a secure link provided by Third Iron through the web as well as the BrowZine App on a tablet or smart phone.

Third Iron, LLC, the company behind BrowZine, has developed another tool to help users get to full-text articles faster.

New Features:

• LibKey Link provides users with one-click access to full-text PDFs when searching in PubMed. Essentially, it will take a user from the PubMed record directly to the PDF. To activate LibKey Link, fill out a brief set-up form with Third Iron, which will create a unique base URL for the institution. Once they send this URL, the library systems administrator replaces the existing base URL with this new one in the PubMed Admin portal for the institution.

• The launch of LibKey Link conveniently coincides with the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) retiring of the manual submission tool and LinkOut Local. Now the Outside Tool (O Tool) is called Library LinkOut, and LibKey Link can be an institution’s base URL in LinkOut.

• At this time, LibKey Link only works with PubMed. According to Third Iron, not all publishers are supported with direct to PDF access, but the company continues to work on adding more. For a full list of platforms and publishers included in LibKey Link, click here: LibKey Link List.

• LibKey Link does not work on mobile devices yet. Once NLM releases a mobile-responsive version of PubMed that incorporates Library LinkOut, the one-click PDF access of LibKey Link will be fully operational.

Business Model

LibKey Link is offered, for no additional cost, to all Third Iron customers whose subscriptions started before December 31, 2018. Customers who adopted a Third Iron product after January 1, 2019 will need to have an active subscription to either LibKey Suite or Third Iron Complete.

Breakthrough

Third Iron continues to release innovative and user-friendly products, and LibKey is another example. Reducing the number of clicks for a user to get to a full-text article will be welcomed by academic and health sciences libraries. Despite Third Iron’s growth, their quick and responsive customer service has not suffered.

To learn more about LibKey Link and other Third Iron products, visit https://thirdiron.com/.