Reference at Newman Library

Year: 2012

Need Feedback on Beta Catalog

This month, Baruch is joining City College, LaGuardia Community College, and the Graduate Center, in testing out a new interface to the catalog that we are calling the Beta Catalog for now. Our existing Ex Libris Aleph catalog is not going away; instead, we are trying out a new separate search interface developed by SUNY and used at most of their libraries (IDS Search).

We are only exploring whether we want to offer this catalog search tool and absolutely need as much feedback as we can get about its strengths, weaknesses, quirks, etc.

Here are some key things to know about the Beta Catalog:

  • Searches are not run against our records in Aleph but instead against our records in WorldCat
  • Presents records from local and more distant libraries, with the opportunity to ILL the item
  • Once a record is found, it queries Aleph for availability and location
  • The interface is mobile friendly (unlike our existing catalog)

We plan to do usability tests on the interface to learn more about how our students actually respond to it.

In the meanwhile, we need you to try to use it as much as possible and to let us know how it’s working out for you. Send your feedback in whatever is the easiest way for you:

  • Talk to Mike Waldman or me or email us or call us
  • Print out screenshots and mark up by hand any notable things
  • Come to the Tech Sharecase

By the third week of June, the four libraries piloting this project will see all their feedback passed on to the Beta Catalog developers (at the IDS Project).

In the coming weeks, you can expect to find links to the Beta Catalog on the library home page. Right now, you can find the Beta Catalog in the following places:

Problems with Books24x7 Logins

For a few weeks now, we have been working with Books24x7 support to figure out why direct access to that resource requires a user to login with a Books24x7 account first. This problem has cropped up in the past and been solved; it appears to have returned again. Since this is taking longer than expected to get fixed, here are some workarounds.

Accessing a book via the link for it in a catalog record

If you try to click on the link in a catalog record to an item in the Books24x7 collection (the link is usually labeled “Click here for the electronic version”), you’ll get this dead end page from Books24x7:

To get around this, you’ll need to go back to our “Databases” page, use the link there to go in the front door of Books24x7. When you do, though, you’ll see a Books24x7 page requiring you to login with your Books24x7 login or register for a login. You must login or register/login to get past this page:

Once you have logged in, you can either use the search box in the main Books24x7 interface to find that book from the catalog you wanted to access or you can go back to the catalog record (as long as it is the same browser) and click the link there to go direct to the book (it should work once you’ve logged in to Books24x7 in that browser).

Accessing the main Books24x7 interface via the Databases page link

If you haven’t logged in with a Books24x7 login yet, you’ll need to do so with your existing Books24x7 login or one that can create via the “Register” link on this page:

 

New database: PrivCo

We now have access to PrivCo.

PrivCo is a source for business and financial data on major, non-publicly traded corporations, including family owned, private equity owned, venture backed, and international unlisted companies. They cover over 30,000 companies, including financial data, M&A and funding activity, ownership structure, and more. They also have over 10,000 investors, and advance search options by company and investor, giving us the ability to generate fields of data within seconds based on criteria such as location, sub-industry, revenue and employee sizes, financial backing and more.

All the data is easily exported to Excel. The research reports can be printed in PDF.