Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Technical Problems

Server Providing Remote Access to Databases & Journals Is Down [UPDATED]

[SEE UPDATE BELOW]
The EZproxy server has just stopped working. I’ve asked BCTC to look at it ASAP. This means that the links to databases and journals won’t work on campus unless you manually remove the http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url= prefix from the address you’re trying to go to. Example:

Academic OneFile

http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/cuny_baruch?db=AONE

Use this instead:

http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/cuny_baruch?db=AONE

For on campus access only. Off campus access won’t be possible until the EZproxy server is brought back up.

Updates to follow as needed.

[UPDATE 30 June 2015, 1:15 pm] The problem has been fixed.

Problems with Off Campus Access to SAGE Journals and SAGE Research Methods Online [UPDATED]

[SEE UPDATE BELOW}

Our EZproxy system that handles authentication for off campus access isn’t working right for SAGE Journals and for SAGE Research Methods Online. While I await on support from SAGE, I’ve temporarily turned off the feature in LibGuides that runs the links to SAGE resources through the proxy server. This means that if you click the links on campus, they’ll work as expected, but if you click them from off campus, you’ll get a page from SAGE asking you to login (instead of getting our usual  Baruch remote access login page).

As soon as I can get off campus access working again with EZproxy, I’ll send an update out on this blog and change the links in LibGuides back to their normal settings. I suspect that the problem will be resolved today or tomorrow at the latest.

UPDATE (30 June 2015, 1:22 pm) Off campus access is once again working for all SAGE resources.

What To Do When You Get the “Oops” Message on the Library Web Site

Sometimes when you are searching for a journal on our A-Z journals page, you’ll click on a database link on the search results page and then find yourself facing an “Oops” page that looks like this:

EZproxy--Oops page

 

There are two things to do every time you see this page:

  1. Click the “Submit” button, which will send me and Mike Waldman a notification that there is a problem with this journal or database.
  2. Try copying the part of the URL for the resource that is in the address bar and pasting it in a new tab or window to see if you can get to the journal directly.

Here’s a 30-second video I made showing how to do the second thing.

The important thing to note is that the URL that appears in the address bar on the Oops page is something you only want to copy part of and paste in a new browser. For example, if this is the URL:

http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://www.ajhs.org/reference/adaje.cfm

…you’d only want to copy and paste the part at the end:

http://www.ajhs.org/reference/adaje.cfm

Why Do I See These Oops Pages Anyway?

There are three commons reasons why this error page pops up:

  1. This is an open access resource that our A-Z journals page (powered by Serials Solutions) is mistakenly sending through our proxy server. Mike and I can fix this easily in the admin options for Serials Solutions.
  2. The resource or database hasn’t been properly set up in our proxy server. Mike and I can look into it and make any needed changes.
  3. You got to the Oops page after starting out with an article record in OneSearch that you tried to view online. Mike and I just need to update our proxy server to let it know that this resource is open access and shouldn’t be proxied.

Problem Accessing Text of Articles Found in OneSearch [UPDATED]

[SEE UPDATE BELOW]

We’re having a problem right now getting to full text from OneSearch. If you click on the “View Online” tab for an article record in OneSearch, a new tab opens up but fails to ever load (the URL in the page that won’t load starts with http://sfx.cuny.edu:9003…) We’re looking into this problem now.

As a workaround, once a user has found an article in OneSearch, they can go to our A-Z journals page, look up the journal, and then go into the right database for full text access.

UPDATE: As of 1:30 pm, this problem seems to have been fixed.

Remote Access to Databases Interruptions Today [UPDATED]

[SEE UPDATE BELOW]

This morning, BCTC is upgrading our EZproxy software, which we use to authenticate off campus users, and moving it to a new server. Remote access may be down briefly here and there during the morning. This may affect OneSearch and the catalog. If you find trouble searching the catalog or OneSearch, these links should work:

Catalog

https://libsearch.cuny.edu/F/

OneSearch

http://onesearch.cuny.edu/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=bb

When work is finished this morning, I’ll update this post and send out an announcement post.

UPDATE: As of 10 am, work is complete and the new server is working fine. Remote access should again be available.

What To Do When a Gale Database Won’t Load

Today I learned about an odd problem that seems to only be affecting Firefox: when you try to connect to some (but not all) Gale databases from our library site, you get an error page from Gale suggesting that there is a problem with our website. I’ve seen this problem especially with MLA International Bibliography and with Academic OneFile. If you use another browser–Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer–you shouldn’t see this problem. But if you’re in Firefox, you can make it go away by clearing the browser cache.

Mozilla’s instructions for clearing the cache suggest these steps:

  1. Click the menu button New Fx Menu and choose Options.

  2. Select the Advanced panel.
  3. Click on the Network tab.
  4. In the Cached Web Content section, click Clear Now.
    clear cache incontent
  5. Close the about:preferences page. Any changes you’ve made will automatically be saved.

If that fails to load the page, then go back to the databases page, find the link again, and click it to relaunch the database. If it still comes up with the error message from Gale, refresh the page (hit the F5 keyboard button or click the “reload this page” button on the browser toolbar).

OneSearch Issue with Content in Search Results We Don’t Really Have [UPDATED]

[SEE UPDATE BELOW]
If you find an ebook in the search results that it looks like we don’t really have access to, chalk it up to a known issue that first surfaced a few weeks ago. As noted on the “Known Issues” page of the Support @ OLS website:

PCI “ghost” activations: For the past few weeks resources have shown up in Primo searches that are *not* activated in the Primo Central Index. Several schools have reported this problem, and it appears to happen most frequently with ciando eBooks. Other collections that show up are: Credo, Dandy Booksellers, Bridgeman Education, several Oxford University Press collections.

Here’s an example of book you can find in OneSearch from some ebook collection (“ciando eBooks”) that we don’t actually have here at Baruch. If click on the Details tab and scroll down to the bottom of the record, you can see where this ebook record came from:

OneSearch--ebook record from ciando eBooks

If you find one of these, please let Mike or me know so we can report it to CUNY OLS.

UPDATE 8 July 2015: The ghost content that we didn’t really have access to is no longer showing up in search results.