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.

Emerald – metasearch working again in eSearch

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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’).

isurv_09

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

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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).

sfx_opac_09a

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

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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”.

Withdrawn resources: Interior Design Handbook, OSH-ROM, JustCite

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

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.

Web of Knowledge – service problems resolved

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

MIMAS report that the problems affecting the Web of Knowledge service earlier today have been confirmed as resolved – all services should now be operating normally.

Please contact the eServices team if you continue to encounter access problems to WoK resources.

Web of Knowledge – service problems

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

The Web of Knowledge service is experiencing technical problems which may lead to some users finding slowness or problems with access. Engineers are working to fix this, but customers may experience difficulties with the following services:

Arts & Humanities Citation Index
ISI Proceedings
Journal Citation Reports
Science Citation Index
Social Sciences Citation Index
Web of Knowledge
Web of Science

A further update will be provided when it has been confirmed that the service is operating normally once again.

Nexis UK – service problems resolved

Head of Discovery and Digital Futures

LexisNexis report that the problems affecting the Nexis UK service earlier this week have been resolved – all services should now be operating normally.

Please contact the eServices team if you continue to encounter access problems to the resource.