Reference at Newman Library

Remote Access Problem on Faculty and Staff Laptops

If you are using a Baruch-issued laptop while off campus (just the ones issued to faculty and staff, not the ones we loan out to students), you’ll want to turn off the GlobalProtect VPN service before you try to connect to library databases and other licensed content. Due to a change in the set-up for GlobalProtect, if you leave it on while trying to connect to a library database, you’ll find yourself looking at a vendor login page, something that you’ll not be able to get past.

While I work with BCTC to figure out how to fix this problem, please use this workaround to sign out of GlobalProtect on your laptop or that of faculty and staff who report remote access problems.

  1. In the lower right corner of your Windows screen (look for the carat to the left of the time and date display), click on the carat to open up the “system tray” that shows programs running in the background on your computer.
  2. Among the icons in the system tray, click on the GlobalProtect icon, which is light blue globe icon with the black dot on it.
  3. When the “GlobalProtect” window opens, click the hamburger menu icon in the top right corner and select “Settings” from the drop-down menu.
  4. When the settings window from GlobalProtect opens, click on the “Sign Out” option in the lower left corner.
  5. You should now be signed out of GlobalProtect and able to get to library resources in the usual off campus method (click a link, get our EZproxy login page, enter your CUNY Login credentials, and get redirected to the resource).

This video I made shows the steps above for signing out of GlobalProtect. If you need to turn GlobalProtect back on, the icon for it can be found in the same system tray location, but now the globe icon you’ll click on will be light gray (indicating that you’re presently signed out).

As soon as a fix is found for this new behavior from GlobalProtect, I’ll update this blog post and notify everyone on our library mailing list.

New Database: LACLI

We’ve added a new, freely available database that a number of CUNY librarians have helped contribute to: LACLI. Here is how the organization behind the database describes itself:

Welcome to LACLI, an international collaboration to create a repository of free online resources for Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx, and Iberian studies! LACLI is an essential tool to find websites that provide access to a great variety of resources such as audiovisual materials, books, data, ephemera, government documents, oral histories, periodicals, reference works, visual materials, web archives and more!

LACLI is managed by the Latin America Northeast Libraries Network (LANE), a network of library professionals representing academic and research libraries mainly in the Northeastern United States. LANE is a regional affinity group with ties to the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM).

In addition to a link to this database on our A-Z list, it also can be found on the following subject database pages:

Places for Students to Have Job Interviews

We frequently are asked by students where they can find a quiet place to have a job interview by phone or video call. In the Library Services wiki, I’ve started a place to list all the options we know about and hope that others can contribute to that page, as there are many nooks and crannies across campus that would probably work.

So far, I have:

  • Book a group study room (current Baruch and CUNY SPS students only)
  • 6th floor computer lab presentation rooms (first-come, first-served)
  • lounge/cafeteria area on 1st floor of the library building

If you have any other suggestions, please add them as comments here or to the wiki page.

Refreshed Design in OneSearch

The CUNY Office of Library Services launched a refresh of the fonts used in OneSearch today. We haven’t yet received an overview from them of all the changes, but things look a bit more structured and legible than before. A number of elements are now in bold to help give the page more structure.

If you have any suggestions about OneSearch regarding its design or functionality, let me know so I can pass that on at the Library User Experience Committee meeting next Tuesday.

New Listing for Harvard Business Review on A-Z Databases

The A-Z database list now features a link for Harvard Business Review. The URL takes you to a new Harvard Business Review LibGuide page that explains all the complicating factors in accessing articles from Harvard Business Review (which we have full text access for the magazine articles going back to 1922 in the Business Source Complete database), including:

  • restrictions on direct linking for all HBR magazine articles
  • restrictions on printing and downloading for selected articles
  • web-only content on the HBR.org website
  • case studies, which aren’t in the magazine anyway, and must be directly purchased by students and faculty

I added a search box on this page that has some hidden code that takes the user’s search term and ANDs it with “harvard business review.” This works pretty well in finding both the magazine articles and the web-only content that can be found in Business Source Complete.

Please look over this new guide to familiarize yourself with all the access issues and options. The decision to add this periodical on our list of databases didn’t come easily, as we normally use the A-Z list for things that truly are databases, given the continuing confusion students and faculty have over this resource, it made sense to give it a standalone listing on the databases page much as we do for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Disruptions to Remote Access and Patron Accounts in OneSearch on May 20

CUNY CIS will be doing scheduled maintenance work on Saturday, May 20, to the CUNY Login system between 10 AM and 3 PM. During this time, users may not be able to:

  • log into the patron account system in OneSearch that would let them request delivery of books from other CUNY libraries, renew loan periods, etc.
  • log into library databases and e-resources from off campus (on campus access should be unaffected for all databases and e-resources except for O’Reilly ebooks and the FitchConnect database)

New Database: Preprint Citation Index

Clarivate recently added a new database to the Web of Science interface. The Preprint Citation Index helps you find articles that haven’t been formally published yet but are available on preprint servers and see who has been citing them already.

A direct link to the Preprint Citation Index can now be found on the A-Z databases page on the “O-P” tab. For more info from Clarivate about this new database, see this February 3 announcement.

Limited Access for AP Stylebook and Artnet

In our password-protected Public Services Wiki, there are details for library staff explaining how students in a specific art history course can access the “Price Database” within Artnet and journalism students in JRN 3100 can access the AP Stylebook. Because these subscriptions are limited for a particular course, they are not listed on our A-Z databases pages. In case anyone asks us in a reference setting about these, you can find all the info you’ll need to answer those questions in the wiki.

Books24x7 Records Temporarily Removed from OneSearch

As of today, we’ve temporarily removed all records for Books24x7 from OneSearch. Since last semester, we’ve been working with the vendor on restoring access to this ebook collection. Previously, the link to Books24x7 in the OneSearch records included a note indicating the collection was temporarily unavailable. That message was often not seen by our users, so to prevent further confusion we decided to pull the records out of OneSearch until access is restored. There is some overlap among the Books24x7 collection with the O’Reilly and the Ebook Central collections, so many titles are still available on other platforms and still discoverable in OneSearch because of that overlapping availability.