Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Remote Access

JSTOR Now Offers Proxied Permalinks

JSTOR just added something very useful: a stable URL that has our proxy server prefix added to it. Previously, the stable URL that you were provided with in article records looked like this one:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/45164010

That URL is unhelpful to anyone who is off campus, although there is a roundabout way to get it to work.

Now, below the stable URL option is a “Remote Access URL” that you can use that will always work off and on campus, like this one:

http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/45164010

In the Library Services wiki page about sharing database links, there is now info about JSTOR’s new proxied links.

 

Instructions for Signing in to OneSearch

On the OneSearch research guide, I added a new box at the bottom that is written with our students and faculty in mind and explains the two separate sign in systems that are connected to OneSearch. The goal of this box was address the most common misunderstanding with OneSearch: to find and view search results, you don’t use the Sign In link in the top right corner that asks for your library ID number  but instead use the remote authentication login page that comes up after you click “Full text available.”

Feel free to add this new box or any of the other boxes on this guide to your own research guides.

Thanks to Linda, Louise, Chris, and Mike for their input on the drafts of this new element on the OneSearch guide.

Fix for Off Campus Access Problems with Emerald

With the launch of the new interface and URL for Emerald, a number of libraries are reporting problems with remote access. I just used the recommended fix that Emerald has been suggesting and found that it works:

  1. Close all your open tabs in your browser, then open up a fresh one
  2. Delete the cookies from your preferred browser
  3. Try to connect again to Emerald

Off Campus Access to Business Expert Press Ebooks Is Restored

We’ve fixed the problem reported here on March 21 that was preventing off campus users from going from OneSearch records for ebooks from Business Expert Press to the full text on the iG Library platform. The problem turns out to be that when the database company changed the URLs slightly for all the ebooks in that collection, that new URL syntax was not shared with Ex Libris, which stores them in the SFX knowledgebase that we use to connect users in OneSearch from records to the places where full text is actually found.

Thanks to the CUNY Office of Library Services for finding a clever hack to rewrite the ebook URLs in SFX. Next, we’ll work on getting the vendor and Ex Libris to update the URLs in SFX. For now, the hacked solution we have works well enough.

Off-Campus Problem with OneSearch Links to Ebooks from iG Library (UPDATED 4 April 2019)

For reasons that I’m still trying to understand, links are failing from OneSearch records to ebooks on the iG Library platform, where we have a collection of books from Business Expert Press. Here what the situation looks like right now:

  • On campus (no problem)
    • Run a search in OneSearch, find an ebook that happens to be on the iG Library platform, click the “full text available” link, and you’re taken to the book and can access it with no problem
  • Off campus (problem)
    • Run a search in OneSearch, find an ebook that happens to be on the iG Library platform, click the “full text available” link, get the “remote authentication” page from Baruch, enter your credentials, and you’re taken to the book BUT you can’t actually view the text and there’s a pair of login boxes on the page from iG Library that are only there for individual subscribers (see screenshot below). The page also doesn’t have the usual message in the top right that says “Welcome, Baruch College.”

iG Library screen asking for login

Here is a sample record in OneSearch for an ebook on the iG Library platform.

Workaround

It may take a few days of back and forth with OCLC to find out why our remote authentication system (EZproxy) is failing for this one set of content (records in OneSearch that lead to ebooks from Business Expert Press on the iG Library platform). For now, we can recommend to our users that they use the link for “Business Expert Press” or “iG Library” on the A-Z databases page to go in the front door of the database and then search for the needed title.

UPDATE 4 April 2019

The problem is fixed (read the details in this post).