On Saturday, June 26, all ebooks from Ebook Central will be unavailable from 10 AM – 6 PM while the vendor (ProQuest) moves its service to a new cloud platform.
Year: 2021
Finding Online Theses from Baruch Students
It’s that time of year when theses written by Baruch students start to trickle in to the CUNY Academic Works system. I’ve been processing them as they come in and thought it might be useful to provide a quick summary of what is actually online.
- Our online collections include only two kinds of theses: theses written for undergraduate honors and theses for the masters in corporate communication.
- Not every thesis is online. Each year, some students elect not to put their work online for various reasons (such those undergraduate honors thesis writers whose thesis is a work of fiction or a collection of short stories).
- The online collection of undergraduate honors theses goes back to the 1986, while the online collection of masters theses in corporate communication only go back to 2019. We do have a microfilm collection of older masters theses in corporate communications as well, which can be found via searches in OneSearch.
- Both kinds of theses are lumped together in the “Student Theses” collection in CUNY Academic Works. If you want to find just one kind of theses, you can search for them by using these specific search queries:
- “corporate communication” will find all the digital versions of masters theses in that program we’ve received since 2019
- “honors” will find all the digital versions of undergraduate honors theses we’ve received since 1986
Remote Access Down on Morning of June 15 (updated)
UPDATE (6/15/2021 8:56 AM) The EZproxy software upgrade was successful. Remote access is working as expected.
As part of a planned upgrade for our EZproxy server software, remote access will be down for all databases that use it on Tuesday, June 15, between 7 AM and 9 AM (it’s likely the actual downtime will only be 20-30 minutes). This work will only affect the databases that use EZproxy for remote access (if you see this specific login page after clicking a link, that resource is one using EZproxy):
New Database: Roper iPoll
Roper iPoll provides access not only to polls conducted by the Roper Center but also hundreds of other organizations (corporations, nonprofit groups, research institutes, news organizations, etc.) Not only will the database be useful for anyone looking for data about political attitudes and opinions, it may also be useful for those looking for marketing info (including consumer preferences) and for those who just need a dataset that they can download, manipulate, and analyze.
To give a snapshot of what’s in the database, here’s a quick run through of what happens if you type something like “religion” into the search box:
- Type in a keyword like “religion” and your search results page may suggest a controlled vocabulary term to re-run your search with
- Search results displayed in two tabs: one has the data on specific survey questions that match your keyword and the other has links to the complete survey or study where those questions matching your keyword appear
- You can filter your search results by “Contents” if you want to isolate just the items with crosstabs, downloadable datasets, CSV files, SPSS data, etc.
- Filter by “Decades” to get to surveys conducted as far back as the 1930s
- Filter by “Countries”
- Filter by the organization that did the survey or study (for my “religion” search, that turned up 548 organizations)
Occasional Link Errors from OneSearch to EBSCOhost Databases (resolved)
There’s a known issue with the way EBSCOhost databases handle incoming links from OneSearch. In some cases (but not most), the link in OneSearch that leads to an EBSCOhost database will lead you to an “EBSCO OpenURL Connection” page that is essentially a dead end (see below for the simple workarounds).
Here is a link to a sample OneSearch record where this EBSCOhost problem occurs:
Here is an annotated screenshot showing which database link in that record is the problem one:
If you click the “Communication & Mass Media Complete” database link, you get to a dead-end error page from EBSCO that looks like this and has options that you’ll want to ignore:
Workarounds to this problem
Until EBSCOhost can fix this occasional problem, try one of these workarounds:
- Look for a link in the OneSearch record that goes to something other than an EBSCOhost database (in the above example, that would be the link for “Taylor & Francis Online”)
- Use the A-Z list of databases to get to a link to the relevant EBSCOhost database and then run the search for the article within that database.
OneSearch and Alma Down for Scheduled Maintenance May 29-30
Beginning on Saturday, May 29, 2021, at 9:00 PM, and lasting until Sunday, May 30, 2021, at 9:00 PM, OneSearch and Alma will both be down while the vendor (Ex Libris) migrates these systems to a new data center.
Workarounds during downtime:
- Articles: search in our databases directly
- Ebooks: search in our ebook databases directly (start with Ebook Central, the largest one)
- Print books: search in WorldCat (although our print collections are still not available for borrowing)
- Videos
- If the video is being used for a specific class, check the course page in e-reserves
- Check our guides to videos
ReferenceUSA Is Now Called Reference Solutions
I just renamed the database asset for “ReferenceUSA” to “Reference Solutions.” The interface remains the same, although the branding of the parent company, Data Axle, is more prominent than ever in the header.
For now, the historical ReferenceUSA data that is also listed as a database (it’s available only special request, as it is a local data file), will remain with the original name.
OneSearch Tip: Broad Searches
If you wanted to find all of our materials that were in French, you can do that in the advanced search mode by using “*” (with the quotation marks around the asterisk) and then selecting “French” from the “Language” limiters.
Once you have that search run, you can further refine it by additional terms or using any of the limiters on the side. Here are some ways you can drill down further:
- Print books: Select “Currently on Shelf” in the “Limit To” options
- Ebooks: Select “Full Text Online” in “Limit To” and “Books” in “Resource Type”
- Works by a specific author: Select the “Author” field and enter the author’s last name. Example: all works in French by Ousmane Sembène, which returns both his works of fiction and the films he directed.
Database Trial: SAGE Campus
Description (from the vendor)
What is SAGE Campus?
The SAGE Campus platform provides 250+ hours of structured online learning for skills and research methods. The courses are self-paced, and instructor-led, packed with an engaging mix of video, interactives, formative assessments and more. Our user-friendly platform makes it simple for faculty to assign courses, or for students and researchers to learn autonomously – building practical skills for study, research and the workplace.
What are the online learning topics?
The courses cover critical skills and research methods across all stages of academic study, including the below categories:
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Navigating information
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Data literacy
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Data science skills
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Research skills
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Getting published
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First-time visitors to SAGE Campus will need to register on the site with their school email address and a password of their choosing.
Trial Ends
May 31, 2021
Access
On and off campus. Use the link on 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).
Using Error Messages to Troubleshoot User Reports of Access Issues
If you’re helping a user who is reporting problems logging in, please consult these resources:
- “Logging in to Library Resources and Services.” This page on the library website is written for the benefit of our users but may also help you quickly find the information you need, too.
- “Error Messages.” This page in our password-protected Library Services wiki is for library staff. I added the text of three common error messages so that you can use the search feature in Confluence to quickly find this page if you have a snippet of the error message.
If you run into problems with logins, e-resources, bad links, etc., please report them to me or Michael Waldman as needed.