Updates on electronic resources from the library of Nottingham Trent University
Problems affecting the MyiLibrary Shibboleth authentication service, which began over the weekend (19-20 December), were resolved on Monday 21 December. During the interruption in service, customers logging in to MyiLibrary eBook titles using their university username and password saw the following error message:
“Unauthorized Identity Provider
The identity provider supplying your login credentials is not authorized for use with this service.”
A technical issue which was causing SFX links to ejournal content on the European Business ASAP platform to fail has been corrected. All links (from journal to individual article level) are now resolving normally once again.
JISC has announced that it will cease funding of the Intute service from 1 August 2010. Intute is investigating alternate forms of funding, and exploring options for the future of the service, but in the absence of any such arrangement being put in place, the following resources will be withdrawn from eSearch at the end of July 2010.
Shibboleth authentication has been enabled for all ejournals on the Informaworld platform. At present the off-campus access to Informaworld titles supported by LLR is through a Shibbolized eZproxy connection, but in the new year authentication will be migrated to a fully Shibboleth compliant login. This changeover will mean that customers can login to Informaworld in the platform’s native interface rather than only through the special eZproxy links provided in eSearch and SFX. For the time being, customers in the native interface of Informaworld can click on the ‘Shibboleth’ login link (see illustration below) and select Nottingham Trent University from the WAYF (Where Are You From?) page.
The eServices team has worked with colleagues in the Software Deployment team in IS to schedule the deployment of Version 3 of the RefWorks Write-N-Cite plug for Word in January 2010. Deployment will begin in w/b 4 January, and a further update will follow once IS has confirmed that the deployment has been completed on all staff and student PCs.
The key enhancement that v3 of Write-N-Cite delivers is the ability to work with (and incrementally update) a single Word document containing in-text citations and associated bibliography (rather than having to generate separate FINAL versions of each annotated document). As it is possible to continue to amend a document for which formatted citations have been generated, staff and students can view the ‘actual’ references in their work-in-progress documents (rather than the coded RefWorks placeholders).
Because of the underlying changes in the software which makes this enhancement possible, any documents previously created using v2 of Write-N-Cite will need to be converted to become compatible with v3. The simple conversion process is documented on the eServices Support wiki. A step-by-step walkthough document is downloadable from the wiki page in both Word and .pdf formats.
In the new year, RefWorks will release its updated v.2.0 User Interface. Review the Press Release; read the introduction to the new version; see screen grabs of some of the key new areas of functionality; and consult the FAQs.
Although the new interface will be available to RefWorks customers in early 2010, Libraries and Learning Resources will not migrate accounts from the existing interface until next summer (rather than introduce this part-way through the academic year). Once the new interface is released, individual staff members and students will have the option to select it as a personal preference, but until all NTU accounts are migrated wholesale to the new version the existing interface will remain the default.
The access problems affecting the eBrary eBook platform (reported on Tuesday 8 December) have now been fully resolved. eBrary’s technicians were able to resolve most of the access issues later the same day, though some secondary problems persisted. This morning, eBrary were able to confirm that all remaining access issues had been dealt with and the service was fully operational once again.
LLR is working with IS to resolve issues affecting on-campus access to electronic resources from the first staff offices to be occupied in the newly re-opened Newton building. Because of the way that Newton PCs have been registered on the NTU network, external web connections from these PCs are not recognised as coming from Nottingham Trent University locations. This is because the IPs of these PCs are outside the normal IP-range of the university. This means that academic staff accessing electronic library subscription services which use IP authentication are not automatically logged in, and are effectively treated as being ‘off-campus’.
While LLR works to secure a resolution to this problem, the advice to NTU staff attempting to access electronic resources from locations within Newton is to use the eSearch, SFX and Library Catalogue access routes to these resources (rather than using any previously stored bookmarks). This will ensure that such requests are automatically routed to the appropriate off-campus login screens (wherever possible) on which staff can login in exactly the same ways as if they were off-site.
Further updates will follow as a resolution to this issue is progressed.
An additional bibliographic ‘Output Style’ is now available in RefWorks to all Nottingham Trent University staff and students – named Harvard LLR – all authors (December 2009). The only difference between this additional output style and the previous Harvard LLR style is the treatment of multiple authors. The Harvard LLR – all authors output style, as the name suggests, lists all of the authors of a piece of work rather than using the ‘et al.’ convention to indicate the existence of four or more authors, as the Harvard LLR style does.
As some minor punctuation changes have also been made to the existing Harvard LLR style, it has been renamed Harvard LLR (December 2009). Both output styles appear under the ‘Nottingham Trent University Specific’ heading in the Output Style drop-down list (see illustration below).
Below are some (fictitious) references illustrating some of the presentational differences between the two styles:
A Journal article:
Harvard LLR – all authors (December 2009):
CLEMENS, S.L., FAULKNER, W.C., BROWNING, E.B., MURRAY, J.S., ALCOTT, L.M., STOWE, H.B. and SANDBURG, C.A., 2010. The History of Everything. Journal of Total History, 24 (12), 22-44.
Harvard LLR (December 2009):
CLEMENS, S.L., et al., 2010. The History of Everything. Journal of Total History, 24 (12), 22-44.
A Chapter in an edited book:
Harvard LLR – all authors (December 2009):
CLEMENS, S.L., FAULKNER, W.C., BROWNING, E.B., MURRAY, J.S., ALCOTT, L.M., STOWE, H.B. and SANDBURG, C.A., 2012. The History of Everything. In: R.W. EMERSON, W.B. YEATS and R.L. FROST, eds., The Complete Book of Total History. 2nd ed. Nottingham: Premier, 2012, pp. 44-66.
Harvard LLR (December 2009):
CLEMENS, S.L., et al. 2012. The History of Everything. In: R.W. EMERSON, W.B. YEATS and R.L. FROST, eds., The Complete Book of Total History. 2nd ed. Nottingham: Premier, 2012, pp. 44-66.
Technical issues affecting on-campus access to external web resources, previously reported on 3 December, are continuing to cause significant intermittent problems. As IS’s attempts to isolate the cause of the technical difficulties continue, the advice from eServices remains unchanged:
“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.”
The eBrary eBook web site is currently unavailable. Requests to all eBrary titles through the Library Catalogue, or to the eBrary platform itself through eSearch, are returning the following error:
Our site is unavailable at the moment
We are installing improvements to our service.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Please check back later.
This is not a scheduled downtime, but a loss of service which eBrary anticipate that they will be able to correct shortly.
A further update will follow once eBrary have confirmed that access to the service has been restored.
All ALEPH services are now available once again, following the full recovery of the service.
Please attempt to connect as normal (to the ALEPH client, Self-Service and the Library Catalogue as required) and confirm that all services are working normally.
If you encounter any problems with connecting to ALEPH, please contact eServices with the details.
eResource updates 
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