Reference at Newman Library

Year: 2018

GIS Workshop Registration for Fall 2018 is now Open

Registration is now open for the fall semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (featuring QGIS). There will be two sessions this term, held in the GIS Lab at Baruch College:

  • Friday October 26th
  • Friday November 16th

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. Participants must bring their own laptop with QGIS 2.18 pre-installed in order to take the class. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register:

http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/gisprac

Baruch librarians: feel free to circulate this info to students and faculty, but please do not post on listservs.

Scanners Now Require Logging in Before Use

As noted in Harry Gee’s email earlier this week, the scanners on the 2nd floor now require users to sign in first with a Baruch username  and password (or a guest username and password). Behind the monitor for each scanner is a small desktop computer with a power button (in case you need to turn a machine on).

Once you log in to a machine, you first see the Windows desktop and then a few moments later, the scanning software comes up (the same software as before). Once you’re done scanning, you can:

  • email a PDF of the scan job
  • send the scan to the color or the black-and-white printers
  • save the file to a USB flash drive
  • save the file to your Google Drive, Drobox, or OneDrive account

Graphing Calculators for Fall 2018

The lottery for graphing calculator distribution is now open. The Newman Library News blog post about it has all the details. You can show students this news blog post (which includes a link the entry form) by starting out from any of these three paths:

  1. Go to “News” on the main navigation on the library website and look for the post (it should be the latest one).
  2. Look for the tweet on Dean Downing’s @ciobaruch Twitter account that is re-published on the library’s home page
  3. Go to the Technology Loan Service page on the library site, scroll down to the graphing calculators and click the link for “check fall 2018 availability”

Table of Contents Links in OneSearch Results

Following up on our integration of BrowZine into Serials Solutions search results from earlier this month, we’ve found another way to take advantage of BrowZine’s API. Starting today, when you run searches in OneSearch, if there is a table of contents related to a scholarly journal article you’ve found or to a scholarly journal you searched for, relevant records in OneSearch will display a link into BrowZine.

EXAMPLE: When your search results include a record for a journal, such as JAMA.

  • Note the  blue links for “View journal contents” (which go to BrowZine) below the green links for “Full text available” (which go to the full OneSearch record for that journal)

EXAMPLE: When your search results for articles include scholarly journal articles.

  • Note the blue links for “View issue contents” (which go to BrowZine) below the green links for “Full text available” (which go to the full text of each article).

Please note that not every school in CUNY has BrowZine and that among those that do have it, only Baruch has set up this integration (Queens is still testing it out).

If you go to the bottom of the Faculty Services page on the library website, you’ll also find a link to BrowZine in the “journal alerting services” section.

Call for Agenda Items About OneSearch

As the co-chair of the Public Services Committee, I’d like to invite any suggestions for agenda items for the committee’s next meeting (July 26). The committee is charged with advising CUNY OLS on needed changes to the display and functionality of OneSearch (we used to focus on the catalog as well, but work on that has halted as we prepare to move from an ILS to a library services platform).

A draft of the minutes from the previous meeting and a draft of the agenda for the next meeting are available. If you have any suggestions for things the committee should focus on, please add a comment to this blog post or contact me directly.

New Feature Adds Table of Contents Display to Serials Solutions

Using the API from Browzine, we were able to customize the Serials Solutions e-journal portal so that search results will display links to tables of contents for scholarly journals.

Example: search results page for American Quarterly

Search results page

Example: table of contents display in Browzine for American Quarterly

Sample table of contents in Browzine

Caveats

  • Browzine only provides tables of contents for scholarly journals (and not every single one).
  • Browzine does not provide tables of contents for magazines (including Harvard Business Review)
  • The tables of content available usually go back to 2005; if you need older issues, the “All” link on the Browzine page for the journal will take you back to the Serials Solutions page for the journal so you can navigate into a landing page in a database to browse issues there.

In the coming months, we’ll explore integration of the Browzine elsewhere in our systems.