Sci/Eng Library Reference Staff Blog

Docs "Format Painter", Improved Accessibility, Improved Contacts

2011-09-19T13:48:13Z

There are some new features in Google Apps this week:
(1) Google Docs Format Painter
There's a similar function in MS Word. What Format Painter does is copy the currently-selected format and style and apply it to the next thing you select (with a single click or a select-drag. Pro: a quick way to copy formatting to another section of your document. Con: it doesn't give you a way of managing the formatting of saved styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) or a way to change the formatting of "all similar text", functions that I have always found useful in MS Word. But it's a start.
(2) Improved Accessibility for Google Apps
Google reports that they have made changes to better support screen readers like JAWS, VoiceOver, and ChromeVox. They also added new keyboard shortcuts to assist blind and visually-impaired users.
(3) Improved Contacts interface...? On 9/13, Google announced that we (Scheduled Release Google Apps for Education users) would have an improved Contacts interface. I haven't seen any changes yet.

Google Sites page-level permissions, Gmail vcard

2011-08-25T14:11:02Z

SciEng Staff,

I have another Google Apps update for you. Next Tuesday (8/30), we'll have page-level permissions for Google Sites. That means that we can create hierarchies of pages within a site while micro-managing who has access to which page. I'm currently on a group that's considering the future of the UL Wiki, so I find this new feature particularly interesting.

The other change on Tuesday will be the option to attach a vcard in Gmail. There seems to be a steady stream of silent updates to Google Apps, and I've only been selecting the few most relevant ones. If you're curious about them, there is a calendar you can follow (let me know if you're interested.)

Google Reader, plus some others coming up soon

2011-07-26T14:10:04Z

Sci/Eng Staff,

Google Reader for UMN : it's here! I talked with a Google Implementation Team member, and he told me that they flipped the switch last Thursday. When you're logged in (http://google.umn.edu), you'll see in the bar at the top your usual options: Mail, Calendar, Docs, etc. Go to "More". Not everything on this page is actually activated at the U, but scroll down to the "Social" section (third section from the bottom) and click on Reader.

The person I talked to didn't have any tips about migrating your RSS subscriptions from your personal account, and he also stressed that support questions for Reader should go to Google and its support forums, not google@umn.edu. At the moment, they are only supporting the core apps: mail, calendar, docs, sites, and contacts.

There's a group called "ITLA" that reviews requests for new apps and changes to apps every month. The requests they have received include FeedBurner, Picasa, Google Labs for Gmail, and Google Groups, among others.

That's as much as I learned yesterday. I'll keep you all apprised if I hear more.

New features in UMN Google Apps

2011-06-23T16:03:42Z

A few new features popped up with our UMN Google Apps accounts this week:

(1) Appointment Slots
This is a feature that was probably designed for instructor office hours and hair salons. You can now share portions of your calendar to allow people to create an appointment on your calendar between specified hours. As an example, I've set up an appointments calendar for UThink: https://www.google.com/calendar/selfsched?sstoken=UUU5aE9QN0xIMnV1fGRlZmF1bHR8NDE3ZWU0ZjkzZTg3NTkwYTY5YzJmMmFhMmU5ZDVjNWI
More information on Appointment Slots.

(2) Default meeting length
You can now set your default meeting length in your calendar settings:

(3) Calendar printing : select a date range
I think this is one we can all benefit from. We can now select a date range when we're printing our calendar.

(4) Nested labels
In Gmail, you can now create multiple levels of labels, allowing you to collapse labels with +/-, almost like sub-folders. As neat as this is for keeping your list of labels tidy, I've found a couple shortcomings:
(a) Sub-labels can't be hidden without hiding the parent label and all of its "sibling" labels.
(b) If you give a conversation a sub-label, it's not implied that it should also be given the parent label. To illustrate this point, here's my example. I have a parent label called "PSE" and a sub-label called "Janice". Suppose I got an email from Janice, and I labeled it "Janice". If I click on the "PSE" label in my list, I won't see that one that I labeled "Janice". Weird, huh? I think some programmer at Google fell asleep during logic class. :) (Modus ponens, anyone?)

Libraries to U is discontinuing their article delivery service

2011-06-10T16:20:02Z

In case you missed this, it would appear that Libraries to U will no longer be scanning articles from our collection for a fee. This goes in tandem with the recent change in journal loan policy. U of M affiliates can now request whole journal volumes through Get It.

http://www.lib.umn.edu/services/libtou

Tax forms

2011-03-21T14:58:35Z

I've been asked about tax forms a few times recently, so I thought I'd share what I've found:

Walter and Wilson do not carry tax forms in print. (I'm betting that this is true of other U Libraries.)
Public libraries carry them (according to Wilson Ref)
MN tax forms online: http://taxes.state.mn.us/Pages/index.aspx
Federal tax forms online: http://www.irs.gov

Ref Desk: Questions about "PDF" or Powder Diffraction File

2011-03-07T16:08:04Z

This is the second question I've had in my last two shifts about Powder Diffraction Files, so I would bet that there's an assignment out there. If someone comes up to the desk asking about how to find PDFs, they might not be talking about online articles. :) They're looking for a set of Powder Diffraction Files that are located at QC482 .D5 P63. They might already have the PDF number (e.g. 37-453), but if they don't, there are indexes, such as the Hanawalt Search Manual (QC482.D5 P633).

If the patron is looking for set 37, and it looks like the series ends at 36, look around. Sets 1-36 are split into two series, one for inorganic and one for organic. After 37, they're combined in a set of red volumes. All three series have the same call number: QC482 .D5 P63

I hope this saves you a little time searching!

Gmail Trick: Label by Drag and Drop

2011-01-21T20:08:04Z

Don't tell me I'm the last to discover this, but did you know that you can label messages in your inbox by dragging and dropping? I'll probably never use the "Label" menu in the toolbar again!

See my post on the Google Tips and Tricks Wiki: http://wiki.lib.umn.edu/Google/LabelDropDrag

Sheet-fed copying

2010-12-15T20:02:13Z

I may be the last person in the world to learn about this, but did you know that you can do sheet-fed copying in Walter? The photocopier in the Great Hall doesn't have the component for this, but the one on the Basement level does. Mechanically, it works like our copier in 329: place a stack of pages face-up in the feed tray. Then swipe your card, and it will deduct $0.17 for each page it takes in.

Hathi Trust, a new resource for digitized microforms

2010-12-08T15:43:13Z

We've heard so much about Hathi Trust, but I just discovered that many of our government technical reports on microfiche are now available in Hathi Trust, and full text links to the digital form are showing up in our catalog!

The key areas of our collection that are now available in Hathi Trust are:

USGS Water-Resources Investigation (about 3000 with full view)

US Bureau of Mines reports (about 3400 with full view)

National Bureau of Standards reports (about 1600 with full view)

Although I found some NASA and DOE technical reports, in Hathi Trust, the number was significantly smaller than those in our microfiche collection.

Here's a screenshot showing where the Hathi Trust links are in MNCAT:

There are some limitations:

The "Online Resources" facet in Primo won't filter your results by what's available in Hathi Trust.

The record in Primo won't show up with the green "Online Access" message (unless we already had an access link from another resource.)

Problem with lib.umn.edu : solutions

2010-10-28T19:24:46Z

If you've been on the reference desk lately, I'm sure you've encountered this issue with the tabs not appearing at http://www.lib.umn.edu. I thought I'd share with you our best sense of the solution right now:

Browsers store websites in their cache for a limited period of time, so the user must refresh the libraries home page while overriding the web cache. Simply refreshing usually DOES NOT fix it. Here are the browser-specific solutions:

Firefox : Press Shift, Ctrl, and R together.
Internet Explorer : Press Ctrl and F5 together
Safari : Press the command or control key and F5 together
Google Chrome : this is trickier.
For Chrome, try these steps, reloading after each one to see if it works:

Ctrl and F5

Clear cache

Ctrl and Shift and Del

Uncheck everything except "Empty Cache"

Change "Clear data from this period:" from "Last Hour" to "Everything"

Click "Clear Browsing Data"

Clear cookies and cache

Ctrl and Shift and Del

Uncheck everything except "Empty Cache" and "Delete cookies and other site data"

Change "Clear data from this period:" from "Last Hour" to "Everything"

Click "Clear Browsing Data"

A Good Trick for the Desk

2010-10-27T14:18:04Z

Have you ever come onto the desk at noon or 2pm, logged into your email or another University resource on the Ref Desk computer, and found that you're automatically logged in as the previous staff person?

Megan found a great remedy: just go to http://www.umn.edu/logout to be completely logged out without closing browsers. She added a shortcut called "U of M Logout" to the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox. I'll check to make sure it's on Chrome and IE as well.

Thanks, Megan!

NEW: search ISO standards at Walter

2010-07-09T13:15:14Z

After years of painstaking student work, we have collected information on all of our ISO standards into a spreadsheet. Jon made an earlier blog entry about this. I just created a web search function that allows you to search this spreadsheet, and I think it will be very useful for all of us at the Sci/Eng Reference desk. I'm going to call this the "Beta" version (perpetual beta?) The long-term plan will be to have LAIIs maintain this database, since new ISO standards come through us for processing anyway.

http://sciweb.lib.umn.edu/test/Sciweb/iso/

Career Resources Web List

2010-06-22T13:38:21Z

We're currently populating the new web list: Library Resources for Careers in Science and Engineering. Please send me books, e-books, articles, and websites for your subjects so that I can add them to the list. You can use this easy web form to contact me: http://z.umn.edu/sciencecareerwebform

Printers & Value Ports in Walter

2009-07-28T14:35:28Z

Admittedly, this post is as much about testing the BlogShow plugin for photo galleries as it is about providing visual information about the location of printers and value ports in Walter (could be used when directing a patron to a printer/value port).

Printers:

Value Ports: