In a new page in the Library Services Wiki titled “Sharing Database Links with Students and Faculty,” I tried to create guidelines that cover all the ways one might share something from a database with a student or faculty member. I also included workarounds for the databases where you have to take extra steps to be able to share something. Please take a look and let me know if something isn’t clear or doesn’t work as expected.
Related post: Identifying Articles from Weird EBSCO Database URLs
I appreciate all the detective work you did in trying to find the exact article needed by the student. However, I see nothing wrong with engaging the student to identify the article by title and source. Afterall, this is what is meant by reference engagement. In addition, the student needs this information anyway to properly cite the article. I think permalinks can be useful, but sadly I see too many students citing their sources by simply using a permalink which is incorrect, to say the least.