Leddy Library Reference Desk Blog

It *was* a firewall problem which Allan has helped resolve.
All systems should be go.

Due to a recent assignment, students may approach the reference desk looking for an IEEE Style Guide. I believe this website from the IEEE will help in this regard.

Users have recently been experiencing difficulty access SciFinder Scholar (that's the Chemical Abstracts on the desktop) in the last couple days and we've been having difficulty accessing HumanClick today. I've talked to Allan who suggests that this may be a firewall configuration problem and he's looking into it. Will keep all posted.

Minutes of Reference Meetings are now on the K drive at
K:\Notepad\Reference\minutes

Yea! Karen did her first blog post!

Ahem. Back to business.

I called Brenda to ask if others have been reporting WilsonWeb troubles. She said no and that when she tried WilsonWeb, the response times were good. She said to let her know if we were continuing to have troubles and with what search.

My problem is...WilsonWeb keeps losing the information ("Your page has expired") and I have to go back in and redo the search everytime...It also happens when I'm reading an article ad I have to go "back" to look at the article list... (Yes, I'm using the "back" button provided in the site and not the one from the browser...) Anyone else with this problem? Come to think of it, this sometimes happens in Web of Science. Any ideas?

Recent WilsonWeb problems of stalling:
If WilsonWeb seems to be stuck for a long long time, close the browser and then get back into WilsonWeb. Not sure why this is happening.

Other things that may be worth sharing...

In order to login to RACER to submit an interlibrary loan, users must put their last name in lowercase

Here's another. If you use a stop word like 'AND' in a search in The Globe and Mail 1844 database and do not specify that you want a Boolean search, then the search will come up with no results. In other words, a stop word will stop the search!

// posted by Mita @ 12:48 PM

Next week's desk schedule (July 21 - July 27)

Follow up: The Globe and Mail 1844 ("Canada's Heritage") is available again.

There are a handful of library websites that I check on from time to time just to see what others are up to. One such library I check out is Cornell's. Two things their website offers that I think of are particular interest is their Great Things About the Library page which one finds by clicking on an image of a peacock on their library's homepage (which they call their Library Gateway).

Also available from Cornell's Library Gateway, is a peculiar section called Antigone: 2003 New Student Reading Project Library Resources. I believe it was developed to demonstrate Cornell's vast academic resources. Why Antigone? I don't know.

The A to Z list of electronic journals has been updated.

The list updates the addresses for CBCA Business and CBCA Reference and includes electronic journals published by Haworth Press and Blackwell Synergy.

Next week's desk schedule (July 7 - July ) Revised

Next week's desk schedule (July 7 - July 11)

Globe and Mail 1844 ("Canada's Heritage") is also unavailable. I've called Systems who will be calling Micromedia.

Sports Discus is currently unavailable due to a licensing lapse [ UPDATE: it wasn't a licensing lapse; it was a technicial glitch of sorts. Regardless, Sports Discus is now available ]

I recently discovered that one can create links directly to articles found within the WilsonWeb database. It doesn't seem possible to create links to the table of contents of journals unfortunately, but its a start.

This linking is not difficult to do but its a little cumbersome...

1. Mark the article(s) you want to link to
2. Click the 'Print Email Save' button in the left hand menu
3. Select the 'Full Text Links' option under the "Include" list
4. Print, save or email the results to yourself

Included in the results should be a statement reading something like this:
Full text link: http://wilsontxt.hwwilson.com/pdfhtml/03837/37XRR/GS9.htm

Be aware that those off-campus can't use this link because the "proxy" bit is missing. The same link with a "proxy" looks like this:

http://janus.lamf.uwindsor.ca:18010/NET/LEDPROXY/open?url=http://wilsontxt.hwwilson.com/pdfhtml/03837/37XRR/GS9.htm

Those with web experience will know that they turn this into something normal to readers like this:

Dinkins, D. Circulation as Assessment: Collection Development Policies Evaluated in Terms of Circulation at a Small Academic Library [Stetson University]. College & Research Libraries v. 64 no. 1 (January 2003) p. 46-53

Faculty may want to know of this feature if they want to add WilsonWeb material to their course reserves or coursekit pages. Should we start promoting this feature?