Reference at Newman Library

New Interface: Business Expert Press

The ebook collection from Business Expert Press is on a new platform: iG Publishing. As ProQuest is shuttering its ebrary service, Business Expert Press had to find a new home for its collection of ebooks. The link for Business Expert Press on the databases page and the links for ebook records in OneSearch should take you to the new iG Publishing platform.

Please let me know if you encounter any access issues, as remote access proved to be challenging to get set up.

New Database: GrantForward

We’ve added a new database to the A-Z list: GrantForward. This resource is something that you and the faculty you work with may be especially interested in, as it allows one to search for funding opportunities or research partners for research projects.

If you want to take it a step further, you can create your own personal login and profile so that you can be notified of funding opportunities that match your areas of interest. You choose to make your profile public or private. Here is the public one I put together for myself that doesn’t have all my info yet but enough give you the gist of what you can do with the profile: https://www.grantforward.com/StephenFrancoeur.

If you browse the profiles, you’ll see that many Baruch faculty have already set up profiles here.

New Books Search Options in the Search Bar

Today, the search bar features a new set of options for book searches. If you want to find print and ebooks at the same time, use the first option, “Books (print + ebooks).” Searches run from this option will go to OneSearch, where all of our print and ebooks records can be found. If you want to limit your search to just print books, you’ll want to use the second option, “Books (print).” The second option sends search queries to the catalog, which no longer includes records for most of our ebook collections.

New search bar menu options

Over the coming months, we’ll be running usability tests and conducting other forms of user research to assess how this change is being received by our students and faculty. If you receive feedback from our users, please pass it along to Michael Waldman or me.

Troubleshooting Login Problems: Determining What System Is the Problem

If someone is reporting that they can’t log in to something, it’s essential to know precisely which system they are having trouble with before you offer any advice. The best strategy is to ask the patron to describe the login screen that they can’t get past. Get the patron to give you answers to one or more of these questions:

What is the web address of the login page that you can’t get past?

If it begins with…

  • https://libsearch.cuny.edu, then that person is trying to log into their library account via the library catalog (see screenshot at bottom of this post)
  • https://cuny-pds-lb.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com or with https://onesearch.cuny.edu, then that person is trying to log into their library account via OneSearch (see screenshot at bottom of this post)
  • http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu, then that person is trying to log into a database or some other licensed resource (see screenshot at bottom of this post)
  • words that sound like some database we subscribe to, then they may be trying to access content we haven’t subscribed to or they may be off campus trying go directly to a database instead of going via our links on the library website
  • http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/er, then that person is trying to log into a course page in the e-reserves system (see screenshot at bottom of this post)

Can you describe the login page? What words do you see on it?

  • Some patrons won’t be able to provide you with the web address of the login page, so a good strategy to try next is to ask them to describe as much of the page as they can
  • If the patron says the page mentions a “library ID #” or “barcode” then it is likely they are trying to log into their library account via the library catalog or OneSearch (see screenshots at bottom of this post)
  • If the patron says the page has  the “Baruch College” logo on it and asks for a “Baruch Username” and “Baruch Password,” then they are on our remote access page (see screenshot at bottom of this post)
  • If the patron says the page has the course number and course name and is asking for a “course password,” then they are in the e-reserves system trying to log into a course page. (see screenshot at bottom of this post)

In another blog post, I’ll outline what advice to offer based on what system is a problem for the patron.

Screenshots of login pages

Library Catalog

Login page for catalog

OneSearch

Login for OneSearch

Remote Access (also known as EZproxy and the proxy server)

Login fo rthe remote access system

E-Reserves Course Page in the LibGuides System

Course Page Login in E-Reserves

New Look for the Blog

The Blogs@Baruch team notified me this week that they needed to retire some of older WordPress themes, including the Freshy theme that had been in use for this blog and for the Newman Library Idea Lab blog. I switched the themes on this blog and the Idea Lab blog over to a couple of the Baruch-branded custom themes. If anyone else in the library wants to try out some of the dozens of other themes we have to choose from, be my guest; I can set you up with admin rights that will let you preview our blog in any of those themes.

New items/loan periods at the Laptop & Circulation desks

The 3rd floor laptop desk now loans a small number of Dell laptops for 7 days.  We also recently acquired wireless/Bluetooth mice that students can borrow until the laptop desk closes.

Also, we have new portable DVD players for loan from the circulation desk.  These loan for 7 days and connect to a computer/monitor via USB.

If students ask for these items at the reference desk, please direct them to us.  Thank you.

LexisNexis Academic Is Now Called Nexis Uni

LexisNexis is shutting down its LexisNexis Academic platform this month and migrating us over to the new Nexis Uni interface. There is now a link to “Nexis Uni” on the A-Z databases page. The existing link for “LexisNexis Academic” has been relabeled as “LexisNexis Academic is now Nexis Uni” and redirected to point to the Nexis Uni interface; we’ll leave this set of dual links in place for the rest of the year.

If you’d like to dive in to the documentation from LexisNexis about the new interface, try these:

If you’ve got links to LexisNexis in a LibGuide you authored and you re-used the official database link, it will automatically get updated to the new URL. If, though, you have typed out in text somewhere on your guide the name “LexisNexis” you will want to change that to “Nexis Uni.” Here is a search in the LibGuides system of all pages where the word “Lexis” appears. Please review these search results and update any mentions of LexisNexis to reflect the new name, Nexis Uni.