UPDATE (9/5/2025, 10:00 AM) Access has been restored.
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Although the link for “New York Times (1851-2020)” that we have on our databases page does lead you to a promising looking ProQuest search page, it does not offer the New York Times Historical Newspapers collection. This problem has happened in previous years and seems to be a ProQuest issue. I’ve submitted a support ticket to CUNY OLS, as they manage this CUNY-wide subscription.
Workarounds
We do have access in a few other databases back to 1980, but those don’t include PDF versions of the articles. Another workaround is to use the New York Times academic pass version (the one where you log into your academic pass account at nytimes.com) and search there (the search, though, is not so hot and requires a bit of patience).
UPDATE: Access was restored as of September 4, 2025.
We’re unable to get into Nexis Uni. When you try connect, you get a 400 error message page that reads “We’re sorry, a bad request was made” that looks like this:
A support ticket to CUNY OLS has been submitted (the database is a CUNY-wide subscription).
We got a surprise from EBSCO last night: they switched us to the new interface before our agreed upon date of Monday, August 11. As you explore the look and feel of the UI, you may notice some of changes from the old interface.
Filters on the search results page. Old UI: found on the left side of the screen. New UI: found on the top between the search box and the list of results.
Permalinks on records. Old UI: found on the right side in the Tools column and labeled as “Permalink.” New UI: found inside of the “Share” option that is represented in an arrow icon that points to the right.
Once you click the arrow icon, choose “Create link” from the small window that opens up.
Permalinks for searches. Old UI: there used to be a option to do this on the search results page. New UI: copy the URL on the search results page (you didn’t used to be able to do this in the old UI). Example of search results.
Chat with a librarian. Old UI: there was a link at the bottom of the UI that provided a link to start a chat with our Ask a Librarian service. New UI: there is a blue icon in lower right corner of the screen to launch a chat.
Although EBSCO claims any bookmarked or saved URLs or links we have to the old UI will redirect, we should begin the process now up updating those URLs in our research guides, website, and course reserves links. As you can see for the example permalink URLs, there is no easy way to systematically update our existing permalinks. Instead, we’ll have to manually do it by going to the old permalink, which takes us to the record in the new UI, then use the Share>>Create link function to get a permalink that is from the new UI.
If you have any questions, send an email to the electronic resources email address.
Today, the sign in page you used to see when signing into LibGuides, LibCal, LibAnswers, LibWizard, etc. has changed. For the past 16 years, that sign page looked like this:
As of today, you’ll instead see the standard CUNY Login page (the same thing you see when logging into CUNYfirst, Brightspace, Alma, OneSearch, etc.)
If you’re into adding bookmarks to your browsers so you can quickly go to any of the Springshare services we use, here are some handy URLs to save:
The new scanning software is now working as expected: once you scan your document (s), you can use the software to email the scan(s) to any email address.
I submitted a ticket to BCTC this morning to report an error that appears when you use the new scanning software and try to send your scans via email. The error message appears in red on the screen right after you hit the “Send Email” button and reads “Failed to send email: Could not convert socket to TLS.”
As workarounds, users can do one of the following if they need to have the file for their scans:
save scans to a USB thumb drive (they’ll need to have one of their own)
use the older scanning software that may be accessible on some or maybe all of the scanning machines (the email option still works in the old software)
Sending scans to the printer does work in the new software.
CUNY CIS will be updating the CUNY Login system on Saturday, May 31, between 6 AM and 2 PM. In addition to affecting access to Brightspace, CUNYfirst, Zoom, and Microsoft 365, it will also affect two library systems:
Remote access to databases and licensed resources
Interlibrary loan
If before the maintenance work begins you are already logged into an application or service that uses the CUNY Login for authentication, you will likely not have a problem. But if you are trying to connect and log in to something that uses the CUNY Login system, you may not be able to do so until the work is complete.
The work of updating the software running on our EZproxy server, which manages remote access to databases and login to ILLIad, is now complete. All systems are working normally again. If you encounter any issues, please report them.
From 9 AM – 1 PM on Thursday, May 29, there will be periodic interruptions to remote access for library resources (databases and the contents therein). We are working with BCTC to update the software on our EZproxy server.
When the work is complete, a new blog post will be posted here.
