News and tips by and for staff providing reference services at the Newman Library, Baruch College (New York, NY).
Through May 6 we have on- and off-campus access to two magazine archives on the EBSCOhost platform:
Links to these can be found on the trials tab of the databases page along with a link to a feedback form. Please share news of this trial with any faculty you think would be interested.
CUNY is looking at a large number of database trials from EBSCOhost. The trial runs through November 20. Access to them is grouped into three different links on the Trials tab on the library website:
Access to these databases is available from on and off campus using the links on the Trials tab of the A-Z databases page. There is a required user name and password that will work for all three sets of databases; those login credentials will be shared in an email to library staff.
We’ve long had access to MathSciNet on the American Mathematical Society’s own platform. This week, we were able to add another access point to the same database: EBSCOhost. If you browse the list of math databases or the main databases page, you’ll now see a separate link for “MathSciNet (EBSCOhost interface).”
Records from MathSciNet are also discoverable in OneSearch; if you click to view the full text from a record in OneSearch, you’ll likely be taken to the article on the American Mathematical Society platform.
All issues reported in the last few days with the “Find it” buttons from SFX and the “View Online” button in OneSearch have now been resolved. This includes:
If you run into problems with any of these services and resources, please report them ASAP to Mike Waldman or me.
See UPDATE below
If you are in OneSearch about to click a “View Online” button or if you are in some database and have clicked a “Find it!” button (both “View Online” in OneSearch and “Find it!” buttons are powered by our SFX service) and get a link to full text that goes to an EBSCOhost database, odds are that link will fail. You’ll get an error message from “EBSCO Publishing” that says “A System Problem has Occurred” and looks like this:
Ex Libris, the company that provides the SFX service, says that EBSCO changed some settings unexpectedly. Once Ex Libris can update their systems to work with EBSCO, SFX should be working again with EBSCO content. It’s not clear how long this will take (hours? a day?)
In the meanwhile, as a workaround, use the “Journals” search option on the yellow search bar to track down the database that has that periodical you need. Links from there into EBSCO and other databases are fine (the “Journals” system is from Serials Solutions and is unaffected by this problem).
UPDATE (9 March 2016, 10:15 am)
Ex Libris and EBSCOhost have fixed this problem.
The problem reported here earlier with PDFs not loading in EBSCOhost databases is now fixed.
UPDATE 4:00pm: The problem is now fixed.
EBSCOhost is aware of the problem that just started this morning with PDFs (they won’t load) and is working on it. I’ll update here as I get more info.
Our access to a handful of EBSCO databases was disrupted late this morning (including Academic Search Complete and Business Source Complete). The EBSCO tech support rep I just spoke with on the phone said that our access should return this afternoon.
UPDATE: These problems were resolved the following day.
It seems to be affecting the campuses differently but some of the issues reported are slowness of response and difficulty in opening PDFs.
Thanks to CUNY funding, all CUNY libraries have an upgraded subscription to MEDLINE and MasterFILE from EBSCOhost. We now have access to MasterFILE Complete and MEDLINE Complete, both of which offer more full-text content. On our databases pages, you’ll see that the listing for MasterFILE Premier now says MasterFILE Complete. The listing for MEDLINE remains the same as MEDLINE (EBSCOhost), which is worded that way to distinguish it from other places where students might encounter MEDLINE access: within Web of Science and via PubMed.