Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Issue Reported

Links from Brightspace to E-Reserves and Research Guides Not Working

This morning, we started to see problems with the Brightspace linking system that connects course pages there to specific e-reserves course pages or to specific research guides in the LibGuides system. In most cases, those links are now all going to a generic “Research Basics” guide. Springshare is working on this problem and should have a fix soon (within 24 hours).

As a workaround, please tell students and faculty that they can still go to the main E-Reserves page on the library website and find a link to their specific e-reserves page. If they don’t know the course password, the professor should have been emailed it at the start of the semester. Students and faculty can also call the circulation desk at 646-312-1660 (when it is open) to ask for the course password.

Friday, March 21 update: As of 12 PM, the linking still isn’t fixed. Springshare is still at work on the problem.

Wednesday, April 2 update: The problem has been fixed (see update post).

Links to Unpaywall from OneSearch Records

Unpaywall is a third-party service that helps identify materials that may be available somewhere in an open access format. In OneSearch, it is set up so that if an item is only available to us in an open access format, a link to it will be made available in the item record in the “View Online” portion, as can be seen in this sample record:

If you click through to the permalink for this record in OneSearch, though, and then click the link for Unpaywall, you’ll see that the item in question is actually not open access (the accompanying videos are but the text of the conference paper is not). Unpaywall sometimes makes mistakes like this (a false positive) about the OA availability of an item. Please report each one of these false positives you find so that the OLS Discovery Working Group can consider whether this integration of Unpaywall is worth keeping.

Payment Message on WARC Database

Despite the fact that we have an understanding with the vendor, the WARC database is currently displaying a current message just below the navigation bar:

Unfortunately we have not received payment for this service, we understand this might be timing of payment clearance, but if not resolved in 14 days your access will be suspended. Please contact us on +44 (0)20 3033 2173.

Access should be fine but if you do notice a problem, please send an email to the electronicresources account.