Shibboleth – new resource migrations

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

Following an intensive period of configuration work, Shibboleth authentication has been enabled for a large number of additional resources. Links and prompts in eSearch and SFX have been updated accordingly. A detailed guide to using Shibboleth on each of the affected resources has been added to the eServices support wiki.

The resources now requiring a university username and password (Shibboleth) for off-campus access are as follows:

  • CSA Illumina
    • ANTE: Abstracts in New Technologies and Engineering
    • ARTBiliographies Modern
    • ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts
    • Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals
    • BHI: British Humanities Index
    • Criminal Justice Abstracts
    • DAAI: Design and Applied Arts Index
    • ERIC
    • Polymer Library
    • Social Services Abstracts
    • Sociological Abstracts
  • EBSCOhost
    • Abstracts in Social Gerontology
    • Academic Search Elite
    • Business Source Premier
    • EconLit
    • International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
    • Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts
    • PsycARTICLES
    • PsycINFO
    • Regional Business News
    • Research Starters – Business
    • Research Starters – Education
    • SPORTDiscus
    • Textile Technology Index
    • Violence & Abuse Abstracts
  • LexisNexis Butterworths (On-campus and off-campus)
  • NexisUK
  • Westlaw

For all of these resources, Athens authenticated access will continue to be available for the time being, in parallel with Shibboleth-based authentication – although LLR will be promoting Shibboleth access (“Using your university username and password”) in preference to Athens.

Academia Portal: Athens authentication issue

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

The eServices team is working with NBS to resolve an issue which is currently affecting the Athens login to the Academia Portal service. Access to the service may be unavailable for the remainder of the afternoon (Monday 2 March), but should be restored by opening of business tomorrow (Tuesday 3 March). eServices will confirm when access has been fully restored.

Wilson Web – Art Full Text and Art Retrospective

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

The eServices team have carried out an audit of the full-text journals available through the Art Full Text and Art Retrospective services from WilsonWeb and have revised SFX (Find it @ NTU) entries to ensure that they match availability in the platform.

Knovel: access restored

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

Access to LLR’s subscription to Knovel has been re-enabled. Links in eSearch have been restored, and links from the Library Catalogue to eBook content in the Knovel platform are now resolving correctly. Please contact eServices if you continue to experience any further problems.

Knovel eBook content – currently unavailable

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

Access to the electronic book content on the Knovel platform is currently unavailable. Links to the Knovel platform in eSearch have been temporarily disabled, and a note advising of the interruption in service added to the information icon for the resource. Links to Knovel from records in the Library Catalogue will return an error message. LLR is working with Knovel to re-establish access as soon as possible.

Withdrawn resource: Mad.co.uk

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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.

New resources: House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 18th and 20th century collections

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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.

ebrary_09_a

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.

ebrary_09_b

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).

ebrary_09_c

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

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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.