Reference at Newman Library

Tag: SFX

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.

Getting to Full Text Via Google Scholar

You probably already know that if you use the link to Google Scholar on our databases page, even if you are off campus, you can force Google Scholar to display a “Find Full Text at Baruch” link next to items on your search results page:

Google Scholar--find full text at Baruch links

Sometimes, though, the link for “Find Full Text at Baruch” isn’t there to the right of the article record, as is the case for the article “Why Ravens Share” from American Scientist seen in this screenshot.

Google Scholar--when there is no find full text at Baruch link

The article record does seem to suggest that full text is on JSTOR, but as it turns out we don’t have access to it there. We do in fact have access to it from two different EBSCO databases. Here’s the secret to how to find that out.

Google Scholar--finding other versions of the article record

After you click “All 2 versions,” you see two different listings for the same article, the second of which has the link we want:

Google Scholar--multiple records for the same article

New Find It Button for SFX Service

Today, the CUNY Office of Library Services released an updated version of the “Find It” button. This is what the old button looked like:

SFX gif for CUNY

Here’s the new button:

If you happen to see the old button in a database, please let me know what database it was so I can fix it.

If you have any comments about the new button, please append them here as a comment to this blog post so I can share them with the SFX Committee that I’m on. At the end of the summer, CUNY OLS will take a look at the SFX stats across CUNY to see if use of SFX went down at all as compared to last summer (if they have, then the committee will advise CUNY OLS about further tweaking of the button).

Fix to Harvard Business Review in SFX Menus

This spring, we discovered that the Find It service was not working for articles rom the Harvard Business Review (HBR). This is what it looked like:

  1. User finds an article record in a database where HBR was not available in full text but is indexed; user then clicks the “Find It” icon
  2. A SFX menu opens showing a link to the article in Business Source Complete; user clicks that link
  3. When Business Source Complete opens, the user sees an article record for the requested article but there are no links to the full text (even though it is actually in the database if you then search for it directly)

It turns out that EBSCO was just hiding the full text thanks to the troublesome deal that EBSCO and Harvard Business School Press have that forbids direct linking to HBR articles unless your library pays an additional subscription fee (see these recent blog posts for details). On the SFX mailing list, a workaround was suggested that I asked CUNY OLS to implement (CUNY OLS manages the SFX service for all CUNY libraries).

Now, when you get a SFX menu, you’ll get a working direct link to the full text of article. The link is labeled “Harvard Business Review (EBSCOhost).” You can see what this looks like on this SFX menu.

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.

Find It Links in Business Source Complete for WSJ Don’t Work

If you find a record for a Wall Street Journal article in Business Source Complete and try to click the “Find it” button to get to the full text, the link on the SFX menu that opens up will offer a link to the full text in ABI/INFORM Global. That link, though, will fail once you are taken into ABI/INFORM Global. The full text of the Wall Street Journal is actually there in ABI/INFORM Global and can still be found by searching within the ABI/INFORM Global interface for the article; the problem is that EBSCO and ProQuest have different ways of indexing articles from the WSJ. That difference makes the Find It service from SFX fail, as the metadata that EBSCO has doesn’t match up with what ProQuest has.

EBSCO support told me that they are aware of this problem and are working to resolve it. It’s not clear how long it may be before it is fixed.

Here are some screenshots to illustrate the problem we are currently seeing:

A Wall Street Journal article record in Business Source Complete…

WSJ article in BSC

…clicking the “Find it” button opens up a SFX menu window that looks like this…

SFX menu

 

…clicking the “Full Text Online” link in the SFX menu window takes you into ABI/INFORM Global but fails to find the article…

ABI INFORM Global error message

 

…even though the article is really findable in ABI/INFORM Global if you search for it:

WSJ article in ABI

New Database: Ulrichsweb

We now have access to Ulrichsweb, which is a great place to go when you need to look up just about any basic information about a periodical, such as:

  1. whether it is “Academic / Scholarly”
  2. all the places where it is indexed and in full text (including databases we don’t subscribe to)*
  3. RL for it at the publisher’s website
  4. history of name changes
  5. subscription costs
  6. whether it is open access

* This index/access info is general info and not limited to the databases we subscribe to. To see exactly what access we at Baruch have, look on the right side of the screen for our “Find it! @ CUNY” icon that can do a lookup for you in SFX and let you know what online and print access options that are specific to Baruch.