Access to the Mad.co.uk service will be withdrawn from eSearch later today, following a decision not to extend LLR’s current subscription to the resource. The entry for the Mad.co.uk service on the ‘Other Passwords’ page will also be removed. No existing registrations from NTU staff and students will be accepted on the Mad.co.uk site from 4 February.
Author: Head of Discovery and Digital Futures
New resources: House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 18th and 20th century collections
Two separate new collections have been added to eSearch – House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) – 18th Century and House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) – 20th Century. These join LLR’s existing subscription to House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) – 19th Century. All three collections are delivered through a single unified Proquest interface.
Each collection offers “page facsimiles, searchable full text and a detailed subject catalogue of House of Commons sessional papers and supplementary material” for the period in question.
Access to all three collections is direct on-campus, and by university username and password from off-campus (using the Shibboleth framework). A guide to using Shibboleth to access these collections has been added to the eServices support wiki.
New interface: eBrary eBook platform
An updated eBrary interface is due to go live for all existing customers in the next 24-hours (see a sample illustration below). eServices will be testing all aspects of the new interface as soon as is it live for LLR’s subscription, and IR will review the existing local eBrary documentation, updating it as necessary.
As well as design and presentational changes, probably the most significant change is the introduction of a default QuickView display for each eBook in the collection. Essentially, QuickView offers a read-but-don’t-touch view of the full-text content – and does not require the eBrary web browser plug-in. However, QuickView does not offer the full interactive functionality that the plug-in offers (such as such as printing, adding notes, or adding highlights).
When viewing content in QuickView, a display offers the customer the option to launch the eBrary Reader plug-in – for copying, printing, notes, highlighting and InfoTools (see illustration below). If a customer clicks on that eBrary Reader button, the plug-in will launch and all of that functionality will become available.
If, in QuickView, a customer clicks anywhere on the page of an eBook (in an attempt to highlight text, for example), a pop-up window will launch, informing them of the need to launch the eBrary Reader (see illustration below).
Once the eBrary Reader is clicked, the plug-in will load in a new window along with an interactive version of the eBook content.
eBrary’s intention in making this change is to remove the need to activate the browser plug-in if all the visitor wants is to search, browse and read the eBook text.
New resource: BRAD Insight
Access to the BRAD Insight service has been enabled in eSearch. Access is by a resource-specific username on-campus and off-campus. The resource is described as follows:
A searchable database of marketing and media intelligence.
The data is collated in association with a wide range of respected industry research bodies, including: Audit Bureau of Circulations, Barb, Cinema Advertising Association, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, National Readership Survey, Nielsen Media Research, Office for National Statistics, Outdoor Advertising Association, Postar, Rajar and WARC.
As LLR has a licence for eight simultaneous users of this resource an additional note has been added to eSearch as follows:
Up to eight members of Nottingham Trent University can access this resource at the same time. If you see a message indicating that all of NTU’s licences for BRAD are in use, please try again later.
Shibboleth single-sign on extended to NOW
NTU’s online learning environment NOW is now making use of Shibboleth for staff and student login. This means that if a member of the university logs in to NOW and then (using the eSearch search widget) accesses a database in eSearch which requires Shibboleth authentication for access, they should be automatically authenticated without needing to log in for a second time.
This is an important development on the path towards the goal of a ‘single sign-on’ environment for NTU staff and students.
Emerald – metasearch working again in eSearch
A technical problem which was affecting remote and metasearching of Emerald in eSearch earlier this week has now been fixed. Emerald searches are now returning results in eSearch normally.
Access to isurv re-enabled
Access to the isurv service in eSearch, which had been temporarily unavailable, has now been re-enabled. Access remains direct on-campus, and by university username and password from off-campus (using Shibboleth/eZproxy).
As the nature of NTU’s subscription to the service has changed, the message which displays to a logged in NTU staff member or student has changed to the following: “Hello, RICS East region universities – you are signed in” (see illustration below). This message previously referred to ‘Nottingham Trent University’).
This change has been necessitated now that NTU’s subscription costs to the service are being met directly by RICS (as part of a wider agreement with other universities) and that LLR’s previous paid-for subscription has been suspended.
SFX – ‘Find it @ NTU’ – enhancement to the library look-up
An enhancement to the way in which the SFX (Find it @ NTU) service checks the library catalogue for print journal holdings has now gone live. Previously, when SFX found a matching ISSN in the library catalogue, a link to the catalogue record was offered in the SFX menu.
Now, SFX is able to pull back from ALEPH the ‘summary holdings’ statement in the catalogue record and display that information in the SFX menu alongside the link (see illustrations below).
Feedback on this new functionality is welcomed, and can be shared with ALT members of the ‘SFX and eSearch Development Group’ Jon Fletcher and Rachel Campbell.
New extended trial resource: Research Starters – Education
Trial access to the EBSCOhost database ‘Research Starters – Education’ has been enabled in eSearch. Access to the service will be available until September 2009. As with other EBSCO databases, access is direct on-campus and by Athens username and password off-campus. The resource is described as follows:
Study and research guides designed specifically for advanced high school students, college students and selected graduate students. They consist of comprehensive, yet concise topic summary articles of about 3,000 words in length written by researchers, scholars and other subject matter experts.
Shibboleth Single Sign-on – improved logon
As colleagues will be aware, access to online resources that are Shibboleth enabled is by university username and password. An enhancement to the login service that has now gone live means that if a customer inadvertently adds an ADS\ prefix to their username, the system will automatically strip this out and allow the customer’s login to proceed normally without generating an error (e.g. ADS\N0101010 will be converted to N0101010). The same process works if the customer incorrectly enters the unwanted ADS with a forward slash as well (e.g. ADS/N0101010 will be converted to N0101010).
This enhancement should reduce the instance of rejected logins, whilst operating as a discrete behind-the-scenes process. The instruction to customers remains unchanged: “Login using your university username and password”.
Changed URLs for free-to-access web content
Web addresses for the Directory of UK Design Consultants and Architecture Web Resources in eSearch have been updated.
Withdrawn resources: Interior Design Handbook, OSH-ROM, JustCite
The listing for the Interior design handbook has been withdrawn from eSearch.
The entry for the OSH-ROM service has also been withdrawn (this resource has been superseded by the new OSH-UPDATE service, available in eSearch).
The entry for the JustCite service has been withdrawn from eSearch.
eResource updates 
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