Category: Library OPAC

Problems affecting on-campus access to external web resources

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

LLR staff and customers working on-campus may continue to experience intermittent problems accessing external databases and online services, pending the resolution of a technical issue affecting the NTU network which our colleagues in Information Systems are urgently investigating.

The problem results in the slow return of some web page requests, and often a time-out “Page cannot be displayed” error. In some instances, refreshing the page in the browser may result in the page loading correctly; but in other cases the site may remain inaccessible.

If you encounter problems with accessing external web sites, please report details of the issue to the eServices team for us to investigate. We may be able to suggest an alternative means of access to the resource, and will also need to confirm that the problem you are reporting is not caused by an unrelated service issue.

A further update will follow once IS has been able to identify and resolve the cause of these difficulties.

If you’ve any questions about this, please contact eServices for more information.

New entry for MyiLibrary in eSearch

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

eBook titles available on the MyiLibrary platform are accessible from the library catalogue, where deep-links to individual titles are provided. A new platform level entry for MyiLibrary has now been added to eSearch. When customers access the MyiLibrary platform via this eSearch route, they will be resolved to the home page of the MyiLibrary service from where they can access the search and other facilities provided by MyiLibrary.

Now resolved – campus wide user authentication problems

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

IS have now fixed the user authentication problems that were affecting services campus wide. So all services that use Shibboleth or ADS authentication, such as NOW, ‘My Library Card’ in Web OPAC, eSearch and RefWorks, are working again.

However, if you do discover any further problems, then please let eServices know.

Major problems with user authentication campus wide

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

We are experiencing major problems with University username and password authentication. This is affecting access to all services that use Shibboleth or ADS authentication, such as NOW, ‘My Library Card’ in Web OPAC, eSearch and RefWorks. IS are currently investigating the problem.

In the meantime, these services are unavailable.

A further update will follow once there is more news to report from IS.

Problems with university web gateway – 23 October 2009

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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.

COPAC – new combined search option

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

Through the COPAC union catalogue search interface, it is now possible to search the Nottingham Trent University Library catalogue alongside the collected records in the COPAC index. To access this option it is necessary to login to COPAC using a university username and password (using the Shibboleth framework). A guide to making use of this combined search facility has been added to the eServices Support wiki.

Withdrawn resource: JISC eBook Observatory Project: 16 records removed; 20 retained

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

LLR will retain access to 20 of the 36 eBook titles from the now-concluded JISC eBook Observatory Project; while access to the remaining 16 titles will be withdrawn.

Details are as follows: Of the 36 eBook titles included in the JISC eBook Observatory Project, 26 titles were hosted on the MyiLibrary platform and 10 on the Books@Ovid platform. With the Project now concluded, records for the 10 titles on the Ovid platform have been removed from the Library Catalogue. Access to 20 of the MyiLibrary titles from the Project is being retained in perpetuity, and updated Shibboleth login links are being added to the catalogue records for those titles; while the records for the six withdrawn MyiLibrary project titles have been deleted.

Library Catalogue – SFX, eSearch and other search connections

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

The LLR web site and NOW Library Catalogue search widgets have been confirmed as retrieving results from the upgraded v.20 of ALEPH on its new sever. Search connections from eSearch and SFX are also now configured to connect correctly, as do remote searches from RefWorks, Ulrich’s, Journal Citation Reports and a number of other external services.

eBrary – Shibboleth authentication

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

Access to eBooks on the eBrary platform is now by university username and password (using Shibboleth). Because of the way in which Shibboleth authentication is managed for LLR’s subscription to eBrary, all existing URLs in eSearch, SFX and the Library Catalogue will continue to work as before, but will now resolve to the NTU Single Sign-on page rather than to an Athens login screen. Staff and students who wish to retain their customised eBrary content (stored in their Bookshelf) will need to contact eBrary to arrange the migration of data to their new login. A guide to the simple email-based process is provided via a ‘Bookshelf Migration’ link from the Nottingham Trent University banner in the eBrary interface (see illustration below).

eBrary_BookShelf_migration

Updated Library Search widget in NOW to go live shortly

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

An updated version of the Library Search widget in NOW will go live shortly. The new version, which incorporates changes requested by the ALT, replaces the ‘Find a database’ search option with an eSearch link and description. The library catalogue search options remains unchanged, but has been renamed ‘Catalogue quick search’ (see illustration below).

NOW_LLR_widget_2009

The ‘Athens – Login Details’ link to the Athens username and password look-up service (currently held in the NOW ‘My Information’ widget) is also to be withdrawn shortly (see illustration below):

NOW_Athens_widget_2009

SFX (Find it @ NTU) menu links to the Library Catalogue

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

Following a series of database and software updates to the SFX (Find it @ NTU) service, which were deployed yesterday afternoon, links to the Library Catalogue from the SFX menu were no longer appearing consistently.

The problem which was affecting the display of the various Library Catalogue options has now been resolved, and all links are now displaying as intended.

SFX_01

eBrary eBooks – Understanding the ‘Document unavailable’ message

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

LLR’s subscription to eBooks on the eBrary platform is to a virtual ‘collection’ of several tens of thousands of eBook titles. Like other ‘aggregator’ collections the subscription guarantees access to the collection as it changes and evolves over the course of the subscription rather than to a fixed list of guaranteed titles. As publisher agreements with eBrary change, new titles are routinely added to the collection and some existing titles are withdrawn from it.

Once a month, eBrary publishes a list of the titles that have been added to, and withdrawn from, the collection over the course of the previous four weeks – sometimes the changes affect less than a dozen titles in total; at other times the changes involve a hundred items or more (out of an overall collection of 30,000+ titles). As these lists of changes are published, the eServices team adds catalogue records for additions to the eBrary collection to ALEPH, and deletes catalogue records for withdrawn eBrary titles.

As these updated lists are only published monthly by eBrary, and then require processing and loading/deleting on ALEPH by LLR, there will sometimes be brief periods when there are some eBrary catalogue records on ALEPH for titles that have been withdrawn by eBrary. In these cases, clicking on the link in the Library Catalogue will produce a ‘Document unavailable’ message (see sample illustration below). There may also be new eBrary titles now available in the collection for which individual catalogue records have yet to be added to ALEPH.

If you encounter any examples where a ‘Document unavailable’ response to an eBrary catalogue record is proving particularly problematic for customers, please provide the eServices team with the details and we will arrange to suppress the appearance of that record in the catalogue pending confirmation from eBrary of the title’s withdrawal from the collection. That record will be removed from the catalogue during the next eBrary record update; and any new records will be added.

The 'Document Unavailable' prompt on the eBrary eBook platform
The 'Document Unavailable' prompt on the eBrary eBook platform