these schedules are now confirmed and posted to the Reference Desk Libguide.
Year: 2015
Books in Print currently down
CUNY Central is investigating.
GIS Practicum Spring 2015
After a hiatus in the fall, the workshops are back! This semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (featuring QGIS), will take place on the following Fridays:
- February 27th
- March 27th
- April 24th
The day-long workshop runs from 9am to 4:30pm. Current CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff, and full-time Baruch undergrads are eligible to register. Advance registration is required; the fee is $30 and includes a detailed tutorial manual and a light breakfast. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register: http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/gisprac.
Registration for both sessions begins on January 30th. Feel free to circulate this info to students and faculty, but please do not post via listservs. I have fliers in my office if anyone would like some to distribute.
Trial to Mental Measurements Yearbook
Database description (from the vendor)
Mental Measurements Yearbook, produced by the Buros Institute at the University of Nebraska, provides users with a comprehensive guide to over 2,700 contemporary testing instruments. Designed for an audience ranging from novice test consumers to experienced professionals, the MMY series contains information essential for a complete evaluation of test products within such diverse areas as psychology, education, business, and leadership. First published by Oscar K. Buros, the MMY series allows users to make knowledgeable judgments and informed selection decisions about the increasingly complex world of testing. MMY provides coverage from Volume 9 to the present. MMY via EBSCOhost now includes the MMY Archive providing all yearbooks from the first edition in 1938, through the 18th yearbook released in 2010 raising the total number of full-text reviews available on the product to over 7,000.
Trial ends
22 February 2015
Access
On and off campus from the Trials tab on the databases page
Feedback
Please share with any faculty who might be interested and recommend they use the trial feedback form (also linked to on the Trials tab on the databases page)
Reference Services Schedules For the Weeks of February 2 and February 9, 2015
These schedules are now confirmed and posted to the Reference Desk LibGuide.
New Look for OneSearch
Today, the CUNY Office of Library Services rolled out a new, fresh look for the OneSearch interface with the following changes:
- More white space
- Less cluttered text
- Options within the search facets on the search results page are now collapsed until you click the + icon
- When you open up a search facet, you see a handful of options within that facet and a “show more” link. When you click “show more” the additional options are now shown on the same page instead of in a pop up window.
- Links for the e-shelf, my account, and sign in have moved from the top right to the far left just above the search box
- The advanced search page now has three boxes instead of five and a cleaner look
- There’s a new “Browse CUNY Catalog” link on the right side of the main navigation bar
Future enhancements that are likely to show up in the coming weeks:
- New source type icons that will appear to the left of every item in your search results
- Clearer display of the help options on the sign in page.
Graphing Calculator Waiting List for Spring 2015 Is Open
The library news blog has a post now with details about the process for students who want to be on the waiting list. If you want to show the post to students, you can click the “News” link in the main navigation bar or on tweet about it lower down on the page:
NYC Data Guide Neighborhood Maps using CartoDB
The city maps on the NYC Data neighborhood page allow users to view neighborhood areas and click on them to view data directly from the US Census Bureau. There is a map for PUMAs (census statistical areas that have 100k people and are similar in size and shape to community districts) and a map for ZCTAs (ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, which represent USPS ZIP Codes that have a geographic area). The PUMA maps point to the latest 3-year profiles from the American Community Survey (ACS), and the ZCTA maps point to profiles from the 2010 Census and the latest 5-year ACS dataset.
Both maps have just been updated to point to 2013 data that was recently released. They can be viewed within the guide, but can be navigated more easily if you hit the full screen button that’s embedded in the map.
Previously, the maps were overlaid on a Google Maps basemap. Unfortunately Google decided to deprecate the ability for people to overlay KML files stored on webservers over their maps. The alternatives they offer are completely unsatisfactory. So, we are now using a free service from CartoDB, a web-mapping service headquartered right here in the Flatiron district, as our new platform. Many thanks go to Data Services CA Rachel Weinberg for researching and experimenting with CartoDB so we could keep this service up and running!
Reference Services Schedule For The Week Of January 26, 2015
This schedule is now confirmed and posted to the Reference Desk LibGuide.
Important Information about Logging in to OneSearch
As soon as you are viewing a set of search results in OneSearch, you get a warning message telling you to sign in so you can see a more complete set of search results:
That sign in request is asking the user to type in their library ID number–the same system we use for logging in to My Account page in the library catalog. The system is not asking here for a Baruch username and password. This is causing confusion for our users for two reasons:
- They have come to associate login requests in database searches to be for their Baruch usernames and passwords (and that still holds true whenever you are off campus and are trying to launch one of our other databases)
- They might not have activated their library account at the circ desk yet and don’t get why it isn’t working.
If the user is off campus–and this is essential–and they click on an article link in the search results, they will then get our usual off campus access login page that requires a Baruch username and password. This means that the off campus user needs to be prepared to use one login system–the library ID number–to see all the search results and another login system–the Baruch username and password–to view the full text of content found.
To help clarify what is being asked for in this initial OneSearch login, the CUNY OLS staff have revamped the OneSearch login page with some help information that can be found when you click the question mark button to the right of each entry box:
Here’s what you see when you click the help button for the barcode:
Here’s what you see when you click the help button for the password:
