Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Bearcat Search

Please Remove All Links to Bearcat Search in LibGuides

Now that our subscription to Bearcat Search (Summon) is ending and has been replaced on the library site with OneSearch (Primo), we need to remove all links and search boxes for Bearcat Search on our LibGuides.

Please click this link that will run a search for “bearcat” across our LibGuides system and show you what pages have that phrase (and maybe links) on them. If you see any of your guides listed in the results, please update them ASAP.

There is now a canonical version of the link for OneSearch that you can map to on your guides (instructions for mapping to a canonical database link). There’s also a box with a OneSearch search widget that you can add to your guides, too; you can preview that widget on this page of “box templates.”

Top 5 Things to Know about OneSearch, the Bearcat Search Replacement

  1. Search for books and all other items from the catalog at the same time as articles.
  2. Start with simple searches and then use facets to refine your search, instead of starting with complex constructed searches
  3. Boolean operators must be typed in ALL CAPS.
  4. Two different authentication systems are used:
    1. Library ID number: if you sign in with it, OneSearch will show up to ~15% more search results than if you’re not signed in
    2. Baruch username and password: for off-campus access to articles, ebooks, etc.
  5. If you don’t sign in with your library ID number, you won’t see article records from any ProQuest database or from Web of Science

Other recent blog posts about OneSearch

OneSearch to Launch at Baruch on Thursday October 30

This Thursday (October 30), we will officially launch OneSearch on the library’s home page. You’ll see a redesigned yellow search bar that has the following options:

  • OneSearch (this will search all of OneSearch and will yield article records as well as records imported into OneSearch from our catalog)
  • Articles (this will no longer search Bearcat Search but instead OneSearch’s articles)
  • Books (this still searches the the library catalog)
  • Journals (this still searches our A-Z journals list from Serials Solutions)
  • Our Website (this still searches our library website using the the Google Search Appliance)

You can try out OneSearch right now using this direct link to it or by looking for the link to it that is on our A-Z list of databases.

Other sources of info about OneSearch

OneSearch: a new discovery service

At the end of October, Baruch will switch from Bearcat Search (which has been using the Summon service from ProQuest) to OneSearch (which uses the Primo service from Ex Libris).

The biggest advantage of the switch is to create a unified search experience for articles, books and other material.

OneSearch contains:
· All records from the catalog – not just that school’s records, but all CUNY records in the catalog (books, DVDs, etc.)

· records for most of the articles that that particular library has in its databases (i.e., all the article records we see in Baruch search results will be things we have in full text somewhere)

OneSearch is hosted and managed by the CUNY Office of Library Services, it is not going to be managed locally by me and Stephen. We need you to continue to send us any issues you encounter and we will work with OLS to solve it; solving issues will probably take longer.

Next steps:
· Please try it out! You can find it by going to the OneSearch link on the main databases page

· The search bar will be updated to reflect what is now being searched. The Book link will remain for catalog-only searches

· Watch out for updates to the Library Services wiki with FAQs and feedback forms.

Please go try it! Go to OneSearch link on the main databases page!

Problem with “Articles” Search Is Now Fixed

The issue reported here last week that identified an occasional problem connecting to full text from search results pages in “Articles” search (AKA Summon and Bearcat Search) has been resolved. It turned out to be a problem with settings in SFX, our system overseen by CUNY OLS that powers the “Find it! @ CUNY” service.

As always, please share any instances with Mike Waldman where you get a “Find it! @ CUNY” menu that fails to connect to the right article or other resource. Details to include in your communication with Mike are:

  • what database you were in when you clicked on the “Find it! @ CUNY” button
  • what article you were trying to track down
  • the URL for the “Find it! @ CUNY” menu (every one that gets generated has a unique URL that provides key info for troubleshooting)

Problem with “Articles” Search (UPDATE: Now Fixed)

UPDATE 09/12/2014: This problem is now fixed.

 

If you do an “Articles” search from the yellow search bar on the library website (this searches Bearcat Search, our instance of Summon), you’ll get some articles in the search results that won’t let you connect to the full text. In any search you do, about 50% of the articles will link directly to the article with no problem. The other half rely on SFX to generate a “Find it! @ CUNY” menu that will lead to the article. For those that rely on SFX menus, the linking system is not working properly.

For an example of this, run this “Articles” search for “homophily” and click on the first item in the search results: “Homophily in Peer Groups” from the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. If you click on the article title or the “Full Text Online” link, you’ll get a SFX menu that fails to list the places we actually have online access to this article (we have it in EconLit)

Until we can get to the bottom of this problem, users who run into this problem can go to the “Journals” search on the library home page and use that to figure out what database has access to any publication that is inaccessible via the “Articles” search.

Harvard Business School Case Studies

To help chip away at the problem of people looking for Harvard Business School case studies in our online collections, I’ve added a trigger in Bearcat Search (what is behind the scenes on the “Articles” search on the library home page) so that if the user searches for them there, they’ll get this canned message at the top of their search results:

Harvard Business Case Studies

  • Not available in any library or database
  • Publisher requires each person must purchase their own copies direct from the publisher’s website

Here’s how it looks on the search results page:

Bearcat Search--best bet--Harvad Business case studies

 

In the admin settings for Bearcat Search, we’re able to create these custom messages and make them appear when users enter search terms that match ones we’ve decided will trigger the message. Here are the search terms that are currently set to trigger this message:

  • harvard business case studies
  • harvard case studies
  • harvard case study
  • case study
  • case studies

If anyone has suggestions about additional trigger search words we should be using, please add them to the comments section of this post.

Some Full Text Links in Bearcat Search Results Not Working (11/27 Update: Now Working)

11/27/2013 Update: This problem that was reported a few days ago seems to have been corrected. If you encounter any further problems with full text links, please add a comment here about it.

11/25/2013 Original Post: I’ve got a support ticket in with Serials Solutions about a problem that just cropped up today in Bearcat Search (that’s the same thing as the “Articles” search in the yellow search bar on the home page). There are three kinds of search results in any search you run in Bearcat, and one of them is currently not working:

  1. “Full Text Online.” These aren’t working. Usually, when you click on these, you get a SFX menu next directing to you the database where full text can be found. At the moment, when you click them you get our remote access login page even when you are on campus. After you login, you are taken to a generic page listing all the databases that we’ve configured for remote access. The SFX menu is nowhere to be seen.
  2. “Available Online.” These are links that will go directly to the article (if you are off campus, you’ll see our remote access login page first, then you’ll go straight to the article). These kinds of links are still working.
  3. “Citation Online.” These links take you to a page with more details about the article, which Bearcat Search knows we don’t have in full text anywhere online. These links still work.

Bearcat Search---links not working

As soon as Serials Solutions solves this problem, I’ll post an update here on the blog.

Better Paths to New York Times and the Wall Street Journal

We’ve now launched a more streamlined way to let our users know about the options they have for online and print access to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, something that replaces the multiple links we used to offer on the Databases page and that now also provides instructions for how to read either paper in Factiva via the News Pages feature.

Instead of three listing on the Databases page for the New York Times pointing to three different links, we have one that points to a new LibGuide page. By removing the multiple listings on the Databases page, we’ve made things a little easier on the eye (and the attendant cognitive load) for the user. Similarily, we’ve gone from two listings for the Wall Steet Journal to one that goes to a dedicated LibGuide for that paper.

Each of these new LibGuide pages features:

  • a box with links to the main online access options
  • a box with info about where to find the print edition
  • a box with screenshot instructions of how to get to the News Pages feature in Factiva and how to use it to select a section of the paper or a different issue of the paper

This project was begun after looking at the search logs in Summon (AKA Bearcat Search) and in the site search feature of the library website, both of which featured a very high number of queries for those newspapers by name. We already knew anecdotally from reference interactions that students commonly asked for help getting to those newspapers. By looking at the search logs of Summon and the site search we could see that a number of students were mistakenly going there to get to the newspapers instead of using the A-Z journal lookup feature from Serials Solutions that the “Journals” search feature connects to.

With the publication of these new guides, students will be more likely to get a usable hit in the site search feature on the site (because it indexes not just library web pages but also all of our LibGuides). If students search in Summon for “new york times” or “wall st journal,” they’ll now see a “Best Bet” search result for that points to the appropriate LibGuide page. Try these sample Summon searches to see how that works: