ICE Virtual Library Archive: off-campus access restored

Off-campus access to the ejournal content in the ICE Virtual Library Archive has now been restored following a recent interruption in service. Access on-campus remains direct; with off-campus access by university username and password. It has proved possible to re-establish off-campus access to this content following a series of upgrades on the ICE platform. Because the ICE Virtual Library is not yet Shibboleth compliant, off-campus access is made available via eZprozy. ICE expect to be able to support Shibboleth based authentication in the near future, when LLR will migrate to full Shibboleth authentication for the service.

The ejournal content provided through the ICE Virtual Library Archive is as follows:

* Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1836-1842)
* Life of Telford (1838)
* Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1837-1935)
* ICE Engineering Division Papers (1942-1951)
* Journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1935-1951)
* Proceedings of the ICE Parts 1 and 2 (1952-1991)
* Proceedings of the ICE – Civil Engineering (1992-2001)
* Proceedings of the ICE – Municipal Engineer (1992-2001)
* Proceedings of the ICE – Structures & Buildings (1992-2001)
* Proceedings of the ICE – Transport (1992-2001)
* Proceedings of the ICE – Water Maritime & Energy (1992-1999)
* Proceedings of the ICE – Geotechnical Engineering (1994-2001)
* Proceedings of the ICE – Water and Maritime Engineering (2000-2001)

In addition to this archival access, LLR has current subscriptions to a number of ICE journal titles. An audit of LLR’s electronic holdings entitlements for these titles is currently underway.

RefWorks – service issues

RefWorks experienced a further brief loss of service on 5 November (following the earlier reported outage on 3 November). eServices has been in contact with RefWorks support in Germany and the US, and provided debugging information about NTU’s loss of connectivity. If you experience any future loss of access to the service during the remainder of 2009, please contact Lib eServices with details of the date and time when connection to the service was unavailable.

Service issue icon in eSearch

When a service issue is affecting access to a resource in eSearch, details of the problem are added to the information held in the Information icon pop-up. However, this service information is not immediately visible in the initial Database List display, and we are aware that customers sometimes miss important service information because of this. In an attempt to improve the visibility of this important information, eServices is testing the display of a ’service issue’ icon in the eSearch display (see illustration below). These icons will be added to databases in eSearch when a known service issue occurs, and removed when the issue is resolved.

When a customer floats their cursor over the icon the following text displays: “There is an issue affecting this resource, check the Information icon for more details” (see illustration below). If the test proves successful, the icon and text will be added to the eSearch ‘Key to resource icons’. Please share any feedback you have on the usefulness (or otherwise) of this eSearch feature.

RefWorks – access restored

RefWorks has confirmed that access to the service has been fully restored following yesterday afternoon’s outage. RefWorks “apologize for the inconvenience and want you to know that we are taking steps to make sure that this does not happen again.”

If you continue to experience any problems accessing RefWorks, please contact the eServices team with full details of the issue.

RefWorks service unavailable

The RefWorks service is currently unavailable due to technical problems affecting the RefWorks servers. It is not possible to access the service from either on-campus or off-campus.

eServices is in contact with RefWorks support team and a further update will follow once access has been restored.

Problems with university web gateway – 23 October 2009

Performance problems affecting the university’s web gateway during the afternoon of 23 October 2009 (reported by IS as now resolved) did affect on-campus access to LLR electronic resources.

Problems were first identified with remote and metasearching in eSearch (when searches were either timing out unresolved or producing an error), but other issues were soon apparent as external web connections more generally were affected. Access to electronic resources within the university network (such at the Library Catalogue, IRep and and LLR web site) were not affected by the problem.

If you continue to experience any technical problems with connecting to external web services, please contact the eServices team with details of the issue.

British Standards Online – off-campus access restored

Off-campus access to the British Standards Online (BSOL) service has been restored. On-campus access remains direct; and off-campus access is now by university domain, username and password. Despite extensive efforts, it has not proved possible to enable either Shibboleth or eZproxy authenticated access to BSOL, so LLR has agreed an alternative arrangement with the providers based on a secure ‘referral URL’.

This is how this works:

When an off-campus customer clicks on the link to British Standards in eSearch, they will be directed to a special BSOL login page. That page contains the actual login link, and a guide to how to complete the two different styles of pop-up login boxes that may appear (depending on the settings on the local off-campus PC). Once the the login has been successfully completed, off-campus customers will be presented with a page indicating that they have successfully logged in.

Clicking on the ‘Launch British Standards Online now‘ link in that page, will open up a logged in session on the British Standards Online service.

Because the customer has to login to the service, and because off-campus access to BSOL is only available through the secure eSearch link, it is not possible to omit any of the steps or to bookmark a page part-way through the process. Because it is the ‘referral URL’ link itself which authenticates the off-campus customer, LLR has to protect this link behind a secure login (to ensure that only current students and staff members can access it).

Withdrawn resource: ChildData

The ChildData database has been withdrawn from eSearch following the conclusion of LLR’s current subscription.

Withdrawn resources: Canis and Equis

The Canis and Equis services (previously accessible from Brackenhurst Resource Room PCs) have been withdrawn and listing for both these databases have been removed from eSearch.

New eSearch Sub-Category: Global Studies

A new Sub-Category has been added to the Politics and International Studies Category of eSearch: Global Studies.

eBrary bookshelf migration

As indicated in an earlier update, LLR customers who previously logged in to the eBrary eBook platform using an Athens username and password and who wish to retain access to their customised eBrary Bookshelf content can have that content moved across to their new eBrary account (based on their university username and password).

Instructions on how to arrange the transfer had been added to a ‘Bookshelf Migration Instructions’ button in the banner of the eBrary interface.

However, initial experience suggests that some customers have found the process difficult to follow. As a result, migration requests will now be mediated by the eServices team who will liaise with eBrary support on the customer’s behalf to arrange the transfer. An updated and simplified version of the instructions now reads:

From 1 September 2009, access to ebooks on the ebrary platform for Nottingham Trent University staff and students is by university username and password.

If you have logged into ebrary previously (using an Athens username and password) you may have stored notes, bookmarks and highlighted sections of text in your ebrary Bookshelf.

If you do not want to retain any of the ebrary Bookshelf data that you previously created under your Athens login, you need take no further action. However, if you want to transfer this Bookshelf data so that you can access it with your university username and password, please do the following:

Send an email with the subject line eBrary bookshelf migration to eServices email address and include your university username in the body of the email.

LLR will then arrange with ebrary support to have your bookshelf content migrated to your new university username and password login.

Once confirmation has been received from eBrary that the migration has been completed, the eServices team will contact the customer by email and ask them to confirm that the process has been successful.

JISC eBook Observatory Project – ‘in perpetuity’ eBook titles

Work to update the catalogue records for 36 eBook titles involved in the now-concluded JISC eBook Observatory Project has been completed. The 20 titles for which ‘in perpetuity’ access has been granted are the following (the first value is the ALEPH system number for the record):

426766
Engineering materials 1

426784
Engineering materials 2

426788
The dynamics of employee relations

426792
Measurement and instrumentation principles

426795
Power without responsibility

426797
The public relations handbook

426800
Media, gender and identity

426803
Media institutions and audiences

426804
Writing for journalists

426805
Cinema studies

426808
Marketing strategy and competitive positioning

426855
Integrated marketing communications

426858
Organisational behaviour and analysis

426859
Management

426860
Structural and stress analysis

426861
English for journalists

426868
Coulson and Richardson’s chemical engineering

426869
Fundamentals of wireless communication

426870
Aerodynamics for engineering students

426871
Coulson & Richardson’s chemical engineering

All these titles are on the MyiLibrary platform and access is by university username and password (using the Shibboleth framework). A note in the MARC record for each of these titles indicates: “This eBook is a legacy item from the JISC eBook Observatory project collection, access to which has been granted in perpetuity.”