Reference at Newman Library

LibGuide for MGT 9495 capstone project

I’ve done a LibGuide for Prof. Leibowitz’s MGT 9495 class.  Students are working on a capstone project in which they are making an employment handbook on some current aspect of employees’ rights, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Medical and Leave Act, Veterans’ rights in employment, workplace privacy and sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace.  (Some of these topics have more legal protections than others.)

The guide has links to federal administrative agencies; legal databases available through the Newman Library homepage, and databases offering secondary sources–such as ABI Inform Global, Business Source Complete, and SSRN,  which have articles regarding complying with the different requirements of the laws and regulations.  I hope it is helpful.  Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.  Prof. Leibowitz has reviewed it.

Should We Include bX Recommender in ScienceDirect

This week, we activated the bX Recommender service in ScienceDirect. The service works somewhat the same as it does in SFX menus: when you are viewing an article, the bX service recommends three relevant articles. Here is a screenshot of a SFX menu with bX recommendations:

Here is what bX looks like in ScienceDirect:

Although bX in ScienceDirect does recommend articles based on the one you are looking at, it suffers from two problems, one that is probably fixable and one that probably isn’t:

  1. Fixable problem: If you access ScienceDirect from off-campus (i.e., via EZproxy) the bX Recommender service doesn’t work at all. ScienceDirect is aware of this problem.
  2. Probably unfixable problem: the recommendations from bX in ScienceDirect only point to other articles in ScienceDirect (the bX service in SFX menus is neutral about its recommendations).

Given the two problems, especially the one that limits recommendations to articles in ScienceDirect, do you think we should keep the bX service active in ScienceDirect or turn it off? Please leave your comments on this post and vote by Feb. 24 on this Qualtrics poll.

Problems with New Project MUSE Interface

In January, Project MUSE rolled out a new interface that now looks like it’s got a few quirks and missing functions.

“Find it” Icon and Link Icon

As noted on my January 6 post about the new interface, Project MUSE doesn’t make it possible for libraries to include an icon for their link resolver, so for us here in CUNY, the connection to SFX is via the link labeled “Find it! @ CUNY.” It’s now apparent that the link to SFX only appears on the search results pages; article records inexplicably fail to offer the SFX link.

What makes the disappearance of the SFX link from article record pages worse is that the pages offer a confusing set of login options at the bottom (none of which are any use to Baruch users) and the pages show on the top right corner a legend for Project MUSE access icons that might on first glance seem to suggest that we do have access (when in fact we really don’t). This screenshot shows the problematic sections of article record pages:

“Saved Citations” Feature Doesn’t Work (Yet)

Although the top right corner of the screen suggests there is a way to have “Saved Citations,” I couldn’t see a way to save anything. I assume this functionality is coming eventually. Here’s a screenshot of the “Saved Citations” feature as it appears right now:

Filter to Search Beyond Baruch’s Subscription Toggles Off

13 Feb. 2012 update: this filter problem now fixed

There is a checkbox on the left side of the search page for “Access” that lets you expand your search beyond “Only content I have access to.” If you run an expanded search and move back and forth between your search results page and article record pages, you’ll see that the checkbox setting you made gets undone and your search results page just shows the more restricted search to “Only content I have access to.”

I’ve reported these issues to Project MUSE and will let you know when they’ve been fixed.

Easiest Way to Check Availability in the Union Catalog

I can’t  believe that I didn’t know this until Mike told me about it today. If you are in the union catalog and want to see on one page all the libraries that have a title and what the availability status is at each school, you can do it by clicking the “Check location” link at the top of the record (as opposed to clicking on the name of each school at the bottom of the record).

Here is a screenshot of where to click:

And here is what the screen looks like when you click on “Check location”: