Reference at Newman Library

Author: Stephen Francoeur

CUNY Login Option for Remote Access Not Working (UPDATE: working again)

UPDATE (9:35 AM): Remote access is now working again. The issue may have been due to an expired certificate.

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I am investigating why our remote access via the CUNY Login isn’t working. Once you enter your CUNY Login credentials, you see an error page from CUNY that says:

Web Login Service – Error

An error occurred: ActionExecutionException

I’ve submitted a ticket to the CUNY OLS Help Desk to see if the problem is affecting all the CUNY campuses that use the CUNY Login for remote access or not. Oddly enough, if you log into your user account in OneSearch, which also uses the CUNY Login system, there aren’t the same problems we’re seeing with remote database access.

I’ll update this post as I get more information.

Remote Access Problem for Chronicle of Higher Ed and Chronicle of Philanthropy (Update: fixed)

Update (2 pm, Feb. 17, 2023): The problem detailed below has been resolved.

On the EZproxy mailing list today, I was alerted to a problem that everyone is having with remote access to the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the Chronicle of Higher Education on the publisher’s website. Off campus users, will be connected to those sites via a link going through our proxy server, will see an error message along the lines of “This web property is not accessible via this address.” The error seems to be connected to the Cloudflare service, something that has come up occasionally with databases we access that also use the Cloudflare service for content delivery.

On campus access is unaffected.

As a workaround for remote users, we do have access via other databases, but those tend to have embargoes on the last month’s content:

Access Issues for Wiley Journals (UPDATE: fixed)

UPDATE (27 February 2023) Access to journal issues from the past three years has been restored. If you encounter any further issues, please report them to [email protected]

ORIGINAL POST

I’ve got a support ticket in with Wiley to find out why a large number of the journals we should have access to on the Wiley platform won’t let us view full text (I’ve also contacted our Wiley sales rep). The problem seems to be limited to issues from 2020 to the present. As soon as I hear back from Wiley, I’ll post another update here.

CCH IntelliConnect Is Now CCH AnswerConnect

As of this month, we’ve been moved over from the IntelliConnect platform to the AnswerConnect platform. I’ve updated the name of the database in the LibGuides database asset, so if you’ve got a link to “CCH IntelliConnect” on one of your research guides, it should now be displaying as “CCH AnswerConnect.” If you’ve typed in “IntelliConnect” somewhere on your research guides (as a page or box title or in a block of text), you may want to update that to “AnswerConnect.”

User Accounts That Say No Remote Access

If a student or faculty member sees this error message when trying to remotely connect to library resources, please always refer them directly to the BCTC Help Desk or SPS Help Desk:

Error page indicating that the user does not have remote access

This is the only remote access error page that has this yellow box on it and that has this unique message:

ERROR: This account doesn’t include remote access to library services from off-campus.

The user should be instructed to contact the BCTC Help Desk or SPS Help Desk and make sure that they clearly communicate that they are seeing this specific error message (this is essential to solving this problem). The user should be encouraged to share a screenshot of that error page or to copy the text of the unique message on it. The BCTC Help Desk or CUNY SPS Help Desk staff will then in turn reach out to the CUNY CIS help desk for help with this, as this is an issue that needs to be fixed in the CUNYfirst system.

In theory, this error message is one that is only supposed to appear when someone has a CUNY Login but no remote access to library databases (such as an alumni), but it seems that the systems that manage identities in the CUNYfirst system can get out of sync, and students who should have access will sometimes see this message.

If you’re not sure how to handle these situations, feel free to send an email to [email protected] (which Mike, Florencia, and I all monitor).

CUNY Login for O’Reilly Ebooks

As of today, the login scheme for O’Reilly will use the CUNY Login instead of the Baruch username and password. To make this happen, O’Reilly had to create a new URL for us. That URL has been updated in the following places:

  • records in OneSearch
  • the database link for O’Reilly on our databases pages

O’Reilly set up a redirect for the old URL so that if anyone happens to have a link to it (such as on Blackboard or an email message), they’ll get pointed to the new URL if they click on that old link. If you encounter any linking problems with O’Reilly, please email me or Mike Waldman.

Business Insights: Global Is Now Gale Business: Insights

Gale has rebranded “Business Insights: Global” to “Gale Business: Insights.” With the new name also comes a whole new design that follows the style of most of the other Gale databases we have.

The design is a big improvement. To orient yourself to the new way of navigating to content in the database, you’ll want to look at this overview from Gale about the new layout.

Through the spring 2023 semester, the A-Z databases page will feature a link in the Bs that is labeled with the old name as well as a link in the Gs for the new name; both links will take you to the new interface. At the end of spring, that old link in the Bs will be removed.

If you have a database link to “Business Insights: Global” on one of your research guides, you’ll find that the has been already renamed for you today (the same goes for links to the database on various subject databases pages).

Database Trials for Two Collections from the British Online Archives

Description

We have access to two collections of primary sources from the British Online Archives:

  • British Communism through Committee Work, 1926-1992
  • Secrecy, Sabotage, and Aiding the Resistance: How Anglo-American Cooperation Shaped World War II

Trial Ends

January 13, 2023

Access

On and off campus. Use the links 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).

New in OneSearch: Direct Linking

All instances of OneSearch across CUNY now feature a shortcut to the full text (or streaming content). From the search results page, clicking the green “Available Online” link will open a new tab that takes you to the content itself. Clicking on the item title in the search results page will continue to open up a display of the full item record.

In an email to the Library UX Committee today, Allie Verbovetskaya, the University Director of Library Systems at the CUNY Office of Library Services, added important additional information about this new feature:

If there are multiple full text options for a record, the system chooses the first one on the list of links in the “View Online” section. The list of links is ordered: the E-Resource Management Committee ensures that resources with dependable, item-level links are near the top and resources with poor linking (looking at you, Lexis Nexis!) appear near the bottom of the list.

There are some exceptions to this behavior:

(1) When the record’s services contain a note, the “Available online” link won’t open the full text but will, instead, take patrons to the full record display in OneSearch. The notes provide additional information (e.g., “This is an open access title and full text may not always be available” or “This link will take you to a search box in Nexis Uni where you can run searches for articles from this source”) that we want the user to review because it may impact their experience in the target database.

(2) Records for journals (not articles) will aways open the full record display in OneSearch (and not take the user to the full text) because there may be multiple options with various coverage dates—and we want the user to decide which link works best for them.

As an example of exception (1), look at how this search results page for Oxford World’s Classics: Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War offers an “Available Online” link that takes you to the full item record instead of the full text because there is a note in our record on the database link alerting users that the ebook is limited to one concurrent user.