On the off chance that the LibGuides system goes down, we’d be without access to our A-Z database list. I’ve created a backup of the list in HTML and PDF formats. If you go to the Databases Overview page in our Library Services Wiki (access to this wiki is restricted to library staff), you’ll find links to those backup files at the top of the page.
Author: Stephen Francoeur
Off Campus Access to Business Expert Press Ebooks Is Restored
We’ve fixed the problem reported here on March 21 that was preventing off campus users from going from OneSearch records for ebooks from Business Expert Press to the full text on the iG Library platform. The problem turns out to be that when the database company changed the URLs slightly for all the ebooks in that collection, that new URL syntax was not shared with Ex Libris, which stores them in the SFX knowledgebase that we use to connect users in OneSearch from records to the places where full text is actually found.
Thanks to the CUNY Office of Library Services for finding a clever hack to rewrite the ebook URLs in SFX. Next, we’ll work on getting the vendor and Ex Libris to update the URLs in SFX. For now, the hacked solution we have works well enough.
Adding a Blog Post Feed in Microsoft Outlook
Yesterday I described how you can sign up to get blog posts delivered via email to you. One downside of the emails is that they only offer a snippet of the blog post; you have to click a link in the email to get to the full post on the web.
What if you wanted to have the full text of the blog post waiting for you in Microsoft Outlook? Having the full text also means that if you use the search feature in Outlook, it will find not only relevant emails but also blog posts. Here’s how you can set up the blog feed in Outlook if you’d rather get the posts that way.
Step 1: In Microsoft Outlook, click “RSS Feeds” in the left sidebar.
Step 2. Right mouse click to open the RSS Feeds menu.
Step 3: In the “New RSS Feed” box, copy and paste the blog feed URL and then click the “Add” button.
https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/newmanreference/feed/
Step 4. Click the “Advanced…” button.
Step 5: In the RSS Feed Options box, check the box for “Download the full article as an .html attachment” option and then click the “OK” button.
You should now see the blog posts in the “RSS Feeds” section of the Outlook interface.
Workarounds When Full Text Available Link Doesn’t Work in OneSearch
If you’re in OneSearch and the green “full text available” link fails to connect you to the full text, there are a number of workarounds you might want to try.
- Click “Additional options for finding full text”
Scroll down the record to the “FT Options” section to find this link:
Once clicked, a SFX menu will open in a new browser tab showing other databases where full text may be found.
2. Use the A-Z journal lookup tool from Serials Solutions to verify what database has access (for articles only)
If you’re in OneSearch, the easiest way to get to Serials Solutions is to click the “Journals A-Z” link at the top of the interface.
3. Go to the ebook platform where the book should be
If the item is an ebook and the full text link isn’t working, try going to the A-Z databases page, connecting to the appropriate ebook database, and running the search there for the ebook.
If you’re in OneSearch, the easiest way to get to Serials Solutions is to click the “Journals A-Z” link at the top of the interface.
4. Report the linking problem
This isn’t a workaround but a plea to share with Michael Waldman and me any OneSearch record that fails to connect to full text. Every OneSearch record should have a “Report it” link you can use to quickly notify us of a problem.
Sign Up for Email Delivery of Blog Posts
Working with the Blogs@Baruch staff, we were able to set up the service again that lets you subscribe to blog posts here as they are published. On the right side of the blog, you’ll see a new “subscribe by email” box where you can enter your email address. Once you submit your address, look for a confirmation email message with a “confirm subscription” link in it that you need to click to complete the process.
Fix Coming This Week for Linking Problems in Gale Virtual Reference Library and Nexis Uni
Later this week, there should be a fix in place for the problems we’ve been seeing over the past few months with Gale Virtual Reference Library and Nexis Uni. This problem always starts with OneSearch records. When the user clicks the “full text available” link for some (but not all) records that are supposed to lead into Gale Virtual Reference Library entries or into Nexis Uni, the user is led to various dead ends.
Gale dead ends
- a login page from Gale that looks like this one (users should only ever see our remote access login page, and that should only come up when they are off campus)
- a remote access login page from another CUNY campus
- a Gale page saying the item can’t be found
Nexis Uni dead ends
- a login page from Lexis Advance (which we don’t even subscribe to)
Workarounds
Until the fix is in place this week, users should take note of the info from the OneSearch record for the item they want, go to our A-Z databases page, find the link for either Gale Virtual Reference Library or Nexis Uni, connect to the appropriate database, and re-run the search for that specific item.
About the Fix
The source of the problems lay in the updates made by Ex Libris to holdings info about Gale resources and Nexis Uni resources in the SFX system (a system that you also see when you encounter a “Find it! @ CUNY” button in a database record. When you click the “full text available” links in OneSearch, that action uses SFX to figure out what database has the full text and takes you directly from OneSearch to the item in the database (in some cases, the link takes to you to the search page for the database). Ex Libris is fixing errors it made in the way SFX translates incoming requests for full text linking for Gale and Nexis Uni resources into a URL made on the fly that transports the user into the appropriate database. CUNY OLS will apply this fix to our SFX server this week, and we should see the problems disappear thereafter.
Expanded Access to the Times Literary Supplement
We now have an additional level of access to TLS (Times Literary Supplement) that offers a richer experience than what we got from Factiva. If you do a journal lookup for TLS, you’ll see that there is now a link for issues from 2012 to the present from “Digital Editions from Exact Editions.”
Off-Campus Problem with OneSearch Links to Ebooks from iG Library (UPDATED 4 April 2019)
For reasons that I’m still trying to understand, links are failing from OneSearch records to ebooks on the iG Library platform, where we have a collection of books from Business Expert Press. Here what the situation looks like right now:
- On campus (no problem)
- Run a search in OneSearch, find an ebook that happens to be on the iG Library platform, click the “full text available” link, and you’re taken to the book and can access it with no problem
- Off campus (problem)
- Run a search in OneSearch, find an ebook that happens to be on the iG Library platform, click the “full text available” link, get the “remote authentication” page from Baruch, enter your credentials, and you’re taken to the book BUT you can’t actually view the text and there’s a pair of login boxes on the page from iG Library that are only there for individual subscribers (see screenshot below). The page also doesn’t have the usual message in the top right that says “Welcome, Baruch College.”
Here is a sample record in OneSearch for an ebook on the iG Library platform.
Workaround
It may take a few days of back and forth with OCLC to find out why our remote authentication system (EZproxy) is failing for this one set of content (records in OneSearch that lead to ebooks from Business Expert Press on the iG Library platform). For now, we can recommend to our users that they use the link for “Business Expert Press” or “iG Library” on the A-Z databases page to go in the front door of the database and then search for the needed title.
UPDATE 4 April 2019
The problem is fixed (read the details in this post).
Finding News Articles in Westlaw (Thomson Reuters)
Another story in the “unintuitive interface design” category: if you want to search in Westlaw for news articles, don’t run the search from the landing page that our database link first takes you to. If you do run a search from that page, all the results will be from legal materials.
Instead, you’ll want to first click “News” from the options below the search box:
SRDS Access Has Become Quirky
SRDS recently changed the interface for their database that is unlike most others. When you try to connect, it looks like you’re unable to access the database, as the search box is not visible at first. The trick is that you now have to click the purple “Log In” button in the top right corner of the screen.
Once you do that, you are “logged in” even though you didn’t get prompted to type in any user name or password. The search screen is made visible in the right middle part of the interface after you’ve clicked the “Log In” button.
Please note that if you are off campus, you’ll still first see Baruch’s EZproxy login page (AKA, our “remote authentication” page) before you get to this quirky new SRDS landing page.