Reference at Newman Library

New Login Page for OneSearch

Working with the Public Services Committee, the CUNY Office of Library Services has redesigned the login page for OneSearch. The goal of the redesign was to provide clearer login instructions that are customized for each school. Here’s the old design:

OneSearch--Login

And here’s the new one:

OneSearch--new login page--1 September 2016

The login for Baruch still requires the library ID number in both fields (unless the user has changed the password).

This new page doesn’t change an important fact: for many users, there may be no compelling need to sign in. Here are the reasons why a user might want to:

  • To request delivery of books held at other CUNY libraries
  • To see due dates of books they’ve checked out
  • To see what fines they might owe
  • For off campus users only: to see search results from the handful of vendors who don’t want their records to appear to users who haven’t authenticated them in some way: Web of Science, MLA International Bibliography, Arstor, Bureau of National Affairs, RMIT Publishing, American GeoSciences Institute.

 

LibGuides and E-Reserves Down [UPDATED]

UPDATE (1 Sept. 2016, 11:23 am) The problems mentioned below have been fixed. All pages are available again.

Springshare is having system-wide problems this morning. All LibGuides pages (which includes our databases page) and the e-reserves system are not available.

On Springhare’s Twitter account, it sounds like they’ll get it fixed soon.

OneSearch Login Not Working [UPDATED]

UPDATE (31 August 2016) The login problem reported below has been fixed.

I just sent a support ticket to the CUNY Office of Library Services to let them know that the login for OneSearch isn’t working (that would be the login that requires your library ID number). If a student needs to request a book, they can still log into the library catalog and do requests there.

GIS Workshop Registration for Fall 2016 Is Now Open

Registration is now open for the fall semester’s GIS (geographic information systems) Practicum, Introduction to GIS Using Open Source Software (featuring QGIS). The sessions will be held in the GIS Lab at Baruch College:

  • Friday Sept 30th
  • Friday Oct 28th
  • Friday Nov 18th

The day-long workshop runs from 9am to 4:30pm. Current CUNY graduate students, faculty, and staff, and full-time Baruch undergrads are eligible to register. Advance registration is required; the fee is $30 and includes a detailed tutorial manual and a light breakfast. Participants must bring their own laptop with QGIS pre-installed in order to take the class. Visit the GIS Practicum page to learn more and to register: http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis/gisprac.

Baruch librarians: feel free to circulate this info to students and faculty, but please do not post on listservs.

Four New Databases

We now have access to four new databases, all of which use the Web of Science interface. There are now separate listings for each of these on the A-Z databases list:

  • BIOSIS Citation Index
    • Vendor description
      • Find the first mention of plants, organisms, chemicals, or lab techniques in various life sciences fields.
      • Access over 22 million records from journals, books, reports, meetings, and U.S. patents dating 1926 or later
    • Also listed on subject database pages for biology and science
  • Data Citation Index
    • Vendor description
      • Provides a single point of access to quality research data from repositories across disciplines and around the world.
    • Anyone care to suggest what subject database lists this one should be on?
  • Derwent Innovations Index
    • Vendor description
      • Conduct patent and citation searches of inventions in chemical, electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. This resource merges the value-added patent information from Derwent World Patents Index with the patent citation information from Derwent Patent Citation Index. You can use additional descriptive information and coding to quickly grasp a patent’s significance and its relationship to other patents.
    • Also listed on subject database page for law
  • Zoological Record
    • Vendor description
      • World’s oldest continuing database of animal biology. It is considered the world’s leading taxonomic reference, and with coverage back to 1864, has long acted as the world’s unofficial register of animal names. The broad scope of coverage ranges from biodiversity and the environment to taxonomy and veterinary sciences.
    • Also listed on subject database pages for biology and science

Books and Conference Proceedings in Web of Science

We have recently expanded our subscription to Web of Science so that additional content with citation counts will show up in search results:

  • books and book chapters (over 70,000 monographs)
  • conference proceedings (over 12,000 covered annually)

For more info:

We have also added additional databases that can be searched in using the same interface; I’ll detail those in a separate blog post.

Harvard Business Review Case Studies

Another tip from Rita: records for Harvard Business Review case studies (or things that look like they might be records for them) are turning up in confusing places. We’ve all known for a long time that the only way students or faculty can get full text access to Harvard Business Review case studies is to buy them directly from the publisher. But our students will often see things in our databases that look like they might give access. Here are some examples that Rita recently alerted me to.

Article Records That Are About a Case Study

Here is an example of an article record in Web of Science (that can also be found in OneSearch) has a title that can easily lead some users to think that it contains the full text. Note that it includes a “Find It @ CUNY” button. If the user were to click that, they’d get a window suggesting that full text is not available but that the item could be requested via ILL, which in fact would not be possible.

Web of Science-article about a HBR case study

This situation is not unlike those articles that turn up in Factiva announcing the publication of some marketing report that leads users to think we must have access to it somewhere.

Records in Business Source Complete for Case Studies

Until today, I didn’t know that EBSCO has indexed all of the Harvard Business School case studies. If you go to this publications listing for “Harvard Business School Cases” in Business Source Complete, you can browse all the records that are included. Here’s a sample record for one of these indexed case studies:

Business Source Complete--Harvard Business School case study record

Note that this record, too, also features a “Find It @ CUNY” button. Clicking that button will also lead you to a window that mistakenly gives the impression that the item can be ILLed.

What To Do

When users ask about the case studies, there’s not much more we can do than steer them to the publisher’s website to purchase them. We’ll bring these issues up with EBSCO and Ex Libris to see if there’s something to be done about the way link resolvers display for HBR case studies, as this special content breaks the usual patterns and rules we have about ILL, full text access, etc.