Reference at Newman Library

Tag: SFX

Should We Include bX Recommender in ScienceDirect

This week, we activated the bX Recommender service in ScienceDirect. The service works somewhat the same as it does in SFX menus: when you are viewing an article, the bX service recommends three relevant articles. Here is a screenshot of a SFX menu with bX recommendations:

Here is what bX looks like in ScienceDirect:

Although bX in ScienceDirect does recommend articles based on the one you are looking at, it suffers from two problems, one that is probably fixable and one that probably isn’t:

  1. Fixable problem: If you access ScienceDirect from off-campus (i.e., via EZproxy) the bX Recommender service doesn’t work at all. ScienceDirect is aware of this problem.
  2. Probably unfixable problem: the recommendations from bX in ScienceDirect only point to other articles in ScienceDirect (the bX service in SFX menus is neutral about its recommendations).

Given the two problems, especially the one that limits recommendations to articles in ScienceDirect, do you think we should keep the bX service active in ScienceDirect or turn it off? Please leave your comments on this post and vote by Feb. 24 on this Qualtrics poll.

Google Scholar Now Listed on Databases Page

We’ve recently added Google Scholar to our list of databases on the library website and in the set of reusable database links in LibGuides. After looking at the database listings for 66 schools (all the libraries in CUNY, SUNY, the CIC, and the Cal State and UC systems), we found that 48 of those institutions had Google Scholar on their A-Z database lists.

Given that many of our students and faculty already use Google Scholar, we decided that it was worth adding so that we can ensure that our users get the most out it. With that in mind, we created a special link to it that runs the user through our EZproxy system AND sets up the Google Scholar advanced preferences option so that our users will see links to SFX next to most items on the search results page.

As you can see from this screenshot, Google Scholar won’t display the usual “Find It” icon we see in our library databases but instead offers a link labeled “Find Full Text at Baruch.”

Bearcat Search Re-launched Using Summon

Today, we have launched the newest iteration of Bearcat Search. The technology under the hood for Bearcat Search will no longer be 360 Search (a federated search tool) but instead Summon (a discovery layer tool). With Summon, we now have a much faster and more reliable search tool offering a friendly and easily navigable interface. If you go to the databases page and click on the Bearcat Search log now, it will take you to the new, Summon-powered version.

Here are some tips for searching:

  • Use quotation marks for phrases
  • Boolean operators must be typed in all caps (AND, OR, NOT)
  • Users can skip AND and NOT and instead use the plus sign and minus sign
    • dogs AND cats is the same search as +dogs +cats
    • dogs -puppies is the same search as as dogs NOT puppies
  • Use an asterisk for truncation and a question mark for wildcards

By default, when you search, you should only be finding items that have have full text access to in our of databases. Just as in JSTOR, you can expand the search to go beyond just the items in our collection; look for the checkbox in the the top left corner of the search results page or the advanced search screen labeled “Include results from outside your library’s collection.”

The items indexed in Summon are mostly articles and ebooks. As was the case with 360 Search, Summon won’t help you find numerical data, images, and other non-bibiographic formats of information. Also, we decided not to include records from our catalog in Summon (Summon lets subscribing libraries upload catalog records as well as records from other local collections). Details on coverage for Summon can be found on the Serials Solutions website.

In most instances, any item on the search results page that you click on will take you to an SFX menu that will show you your options for accessing that content; the remainder of time, a click will take you straight to the full text. In the coming year, the percentage of items that require SFX to get you to the full text will decrease and the percentage that feature a direct link will increase (this improvement is part of the vendor’s overall plan to make Summon less reliant on link resolvers like SFX).

Mike Waldman and I are trying to gauge interest in having a training session for this database. If you are interested, please leave a comment here on this post or contact us directly. Also, if you have any questions or problems with the new Bearcat Search, please let us know.

New Project MUSE Interface

This week, Project MUSE launched a major new overhaul of the interface (read the official press release). The most notable element of the new interface is that ebooks from university presses are now part of the site’s indexed content.

As in the case of JSTOR, we have not subscribed to all the collections in this database. Unlike JSTOR, the default search mode to search all of the content (as opposed to the default of only searching what you have licensed). When users search Project MUSE, they’ll see all sorts of content that we might not have in Project MUSE. SFX, though, is set up in Project MUSE, so users should look for a “Find it @ CUNY” link next to such items (sadly, the interface doesn’t allow us to have that text link accompanied by our usual Find It icon. Here’s a screenshot of what the SFX link looks like on  a search results page:



If you want to limit your search to just the content that is immediately available to us in full text within Project MUSE, the only way to do that is AFTER you have run a search in a checkbox that appears on the left side of the search results page. Here’s a screenshot:

New Interface for ProQuest Databases

Today we switched over to the new ProQuest interface. The look of this new interface is a lot cleaner and lightweight (this seems to be a mini-trend, as the new Factiva and Passport GMID interfaces feel lighter, too).

What’s New Here?

  • PAIS International is now in ProQuest instead in CSA
  • Links to SFX now include the “Find It” icon instead of just text
  • A “Figures & Tables” search in some databases
  • A “Data & Reports” search in ABI/INFORM Global
  • Historical and non-historical databases can be searched together

Bugs/Quirks

  • If you are looking at the item record for an article where there is no full text, you’ll see two “Find It” icons (see this example). ProQuest told me that they are working on this problem.
  • The link to our Ask a Librarian service went from the top right of the page in the old interface to the bottom right of the new one (but we now can have an icon instead of just a text link).
  • Please contact Mike or me with any problems you find in the new interface.

Fixing Links in LibGuides

The new interface has a new base URL (search.proquest.com). Using a find and replace feature in LibGuides, I was able to update some but not all of the links in LibGuides that went to the old interface (the search and find only works in certain kinds of boxes in the LibGuides system). Please check any links in your guides now to make sure they point to the new URLs.

bX Recommender Trial Starting April 29

We mentioned the bxRecommender trial a while ago.

The trial will in fact start this Friday, April 29 and will last 60 days.

Some additional information:

bX Recommender is a service from Ex Libris which generates usage-based recommendations for related scholarly materials. (Recommendations appear below Find it! menu links, similar to Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”). Ex Libris mines customers’ SFX log files, which is data largely unique to academic libraries, to build a data set processed with analytic tools and to develop the recommendations found in the bX Recommender service.

While the data is aggregated from actual searches, this process is anonymized to protect end user and institutional confidentiality.

Users at CUNY campus libraries will view all recommendations available through the bX Recommender service, both those the institution has in full-text and others we may not.

Please encourage end-users to test it out and let me know what they and you think.

bX Recommender trial coming to CUNY

CUNY librarians have agreed to a 60 day trial of bX Recommender starting Monday April 11.

bX Recommender works with SFX and with the universe of SFX user-choices across the world to generate citations similar to the one that generated the first SFX link. In other words, when the user has found a citation they like, bX Recommender will suggest other citations that other people who looked at the first citation have also looked at. It’s a version of “others have also liked…” that appears in a variety of other websites.

This additional information will appear in the SFX menu – it will separate the additional citations into those we have access to full-text and those we don’t. This post from the University of Minnesota Libraries might give you an idea of how it will look.