Reference at Newman Library

Tag: LibGuides

Log In to LibGuides Using Your Baruch Username

Thanks to the help of John Bravo from BCTC, we’re now able to use our Baruch usernames and passwords to log in to LibGuides. When you bring up the login screen, by default you are asked for your LibGuides login, but there is now a link on the right that takes you to a page where you can use your Baruch username instead:

Screenshot of new login option using Baruch username

The login link can still be found on the bottom of every LibGuides page. Here’s a direct link to the page if you want to bookmark it or give it a try now:

https://baruch-cuny.libapps.com/libapps/login.php

If we hire a new staff or faculty member in the library who needs LibGuides access, I’ll still need to set up a LibGuides account for that person, but from that point on that person can also use their Baruch username to login.

What To Do When the Library Website Is Down

Last week, there were a few hours here and there when the library website was down. When that happens, it’s worth knowing that all the content on the LibGuides system is still available, as those pages are hosted externally from the Springshare service. LibGuides content includes:

If you can’t recall the URL for our set of LibGuides pages, just do a web search for “baruch libguides” and you’ll find them.

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.

Alternative Access to Databases Pages on January 12

Beginning at 11:30 am on Monday, January 12, all of our LibGuides will become unavailable for up to 24 hours as we switch to the new LibGuides platform. This means that the pages we provide with links to databases will also be unavailable. As an alternative, please use this Google Doc which provides an A-Z list of database links.

To notify our users, we’ll be doing the following:

  • sending out a tweet on the @baruchlibrary Twitter account
  • changing some of the links on the library website that point to the databases pages so that they go to the alternative listing of databases

It is likely that the new LibGuides will be ready in less than 24 hours. As soon as it is up, I’ll send out an email and write a new post here on the reference blog.

 

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.”

New Statistics Databases Page

There is a new subject-specific databases page for statistics. One of the challenges in designing this page was to recognize that when a student asks for “statistics” they usually have some specific topic in mind. This page attempts to steer them to some of the more common areas where our students ask for statistics but does not try to overwhelm them with every last possible topic area where they might be seeking statistics.

Over the summer, I’ll do some usability testing with this page to see if how well it aligns with user expectations. I’ll also be looking at the page statistics in LibGuides to see what links people are actually clicking on (Springshare offers instructions on how to do this for your own guides).

If you have any feedback you’d like to offer, please append it here as a comment to this blog post.

Subject Guides Now Labeled as Research Guides

Over the past year, I conducted a survey of our students to find out what name they thought made most sense for our LibGuides. Students preferred “research guides” over “subject guides,” and “topic guides.” With this data in hand, I asked Arthur to approve changing the links on the library website that were labeled “Subject Guides” to “Research Guides.” Those changes are now live on the site.

On the LibGuides system, you’ll also see that where it used to say “Subject Guides” in the breadcrumb navigation on the top left, it now says “Research Guides.”

LibGuides--renaming to Research Guides

How to Find Empirical Studies in PsycINFO

A common question in reference comes from psychology students who need to find an article that reports on the results of an empirical study. I’ve put together an annotated screenshot on the Psychology research guide that shows you how to use the Methodology limiter in PsycINFO to find articles tagged with “Empirical Study.”

The methodology limiters have a lot of other goodies. In addition to the Literature Review one that I mentioned in an earlier blog post), there are ones for:

  • Clinical case study
  • Longitudinal study
  • Treatment Outcome/Clinical Trial

For more, see the “APA Databases Methodology Field Values” page.

Please Update All Links to THOMAS on Your LibGuides

On November 19, all links to THOMAS will be redirected to Congress.gov, as the old THOMAS site will be retired (details here on the change). Please make sure that you update all links you have on your LibGuides to any pages on THOMAS. If you click this URL below, it will run a search in LibGuides for the word “thomas” and help you find any guides where you may have linked to it:

http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/search.php?iid=771&c=0&pid=&search_field=&search=%22thomas.gov%22