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.
Category: RefWorks
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.
RefWorks – workflow for any mismatched accounts for returning students
The account migration from Athens to Shibboleth authentication on the RefWorks platform has gone extremely well, with only a tiny number of individual account issues requiring further intervention. However, it is possible that, as returning students begin to login to RefWorks in greater numbers, more issues may arise. We have become aware that if a student mistyped their university username at the point that they first registered for RefWorks the identifier that Shibboleth releases to RefWorks will not match, and they will not be associated with their previous saved record set.
If you encounter any instances where returning students (or staff members) logging in to RefWorks find that previously saved references (stored under their Athens login) are ‘missing’, please send the customer’s details to the Lib eServices mailbox, and reassure the customer that previously saved records will be restored to their account. eServices can then make the necessary account changes to reinstate access to that saved content.
Library Catalogue – SFX, eSearch and other search connections
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.
SFX direct export to RefWorks
A technical problem preventing the direct export of the metadata of an SFX result to RefWorks has now been resolved. The export facility is now working normally again.
RefWorks – Harvard LLR output style updated
A revised version of the default RefWorks output style [Harvard LLR (May 2009)] has today been made available to all NTU staff and students. A guide, outlining the changes introduced in the revision and documenting a workaround for the management of page numbers (and other notations) within an in-text citation, has been added to the eServices Support wiki.
eSearch to RefWorks export – now possible to export multiple records
An enhancement to the way that the export of records from eSearch to RefWorks is handled has now gone live. It is now possible to export multiple records from eSearch into RefWorks at the same time (rather than simply exporting individual records), using the functionality of the eSearch eShelf. The wiki guide to using the eSearch to RefWorks export has been updated to include the new feature.
Direct export from eSearch to RefWorks now available
The launch of a new facility in eSearch means that it is now possible to export a record from an eSearch search directly into RefWorks.
A walkthrough guide to the new functionality has been added to the eServices Support wiki.
ALEPH – problem with remote search services resolved
The restart of the ALEPH server has cleared the problem that SFX was experiencing in querying the Library Catalogue – so links in SFX to ALEPH have been reinstated and confirmed as working.
Please let eServices know if you experience any further problems.
Problem with remote search services on ALEPH
A technical problem with a ‘look-up’ service on the ALEPH server started to cause problems with SFX requests at around 15:45 this afternoon.
ALEPH stopped responding to ‘look-up’ requests from SFX, based on ISSN and ISBN. The result was first a delay and then a time-out of the SFX service.
To enable the immediate recovery of the SFX service, requests to ALEPH from SFX have been temporarily disabled. A message has been added to the SFX menu indicating that ‘SFX is currently unable to check the library catalogue for this item’ (see screengrab below). This has been done for both the existing and new installations of SFX.
Searches of the Library Catalogue from RefWorks are also affected.
However searches carried out within the Library Catalogue, or via eSearch are working normally.
An update will be provided once a resolution for this technical problem is in place and remote search services restored.
RefWorks – OPAC searches now up to date
A configuration setting which was preventing searches of the Library Catalogue from RefWorks from returning the most recently indexed records has now been corrected. Searches of the OPAC from RefWorks now return records as soon as they are indexed by ALEPH.
eResource updates 
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