Did you know you can save a search in PubMed and create a URL to that search to post to a blog or wiki or whatever?
Here's how to do it:
1. Create your search in PubMed
2. Go to the Details tab
3. Click on the URL button
This will generate a URL that you can copy and save for whatever diabolical purposes you have in mind!
For an example, visit my del.icio.us page about public health resources and go to the PubMed search on "avian flu"
That's your Tip of the Day!
--Lisa
Those of you who were at the Reference Training meeting on 11/22/06 got a copy of this month's Reference Challenge question. At every reference training meeting, we'd like to hand out a real-life tricky question that we received from a patron, and give everyone a chance to try and answer it. This is a great opportunity to flex your reference muscles, and see how your colleagues approached a tough question. And, let's admit it people, stuff like this is ridiculously fun.
So, without further ado, here is this month's Reference Challenge:
A patron wants to cite this reference. Verify the citation, and determine if the item is held at the University of Minnesota.
Bielschowsky, A. "Die Innervation des musculi recti interni als Seitenwender," Ber Dtsch ophthalmol Ges 1903; 30: 164-71 (as cited in Van Vliet, A. G. M.: "Posttraumatic Ocular Imbalance." In Vinken, P. J. Bruyn, G. W., (eds) Handbook of Clinical Neurology. vol. 24, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1976; 75.)
Give your answer to Del, and keep track of your strategy so we can compare at the next meeting! Also, if you've worked on a question you'd like to nominate for the next Reference Challenge, let Del or Liz know. Have fun!
Liz
Here is a brief recap of the information Lisa covered at the Reference Training meeting on 11/22, regarding access to electronic resources/sending PDFs of articles to patrons.
See the InfoPoint staff page (http://staff.lib.umn.edu/rcs/dist/ref/infopoint/) for resources that may be helpful to you when troubleshooting access to resources.
In addition to the information on the InfoPoint page, here is a brief blurb InfoPoint (IP) uses when they end up emailing a PDF to a patron who is having access difficulties. IP will only send out a PDF to an affiliated patron (faculty/staff/student) when they are having access problems to a resource and/or indicate a need for the information ASAP. Staff who do medref should also be aware of this and utilize the language below whenever emailing a PDF occurs.
Here is a template of text that IP includes when this happens:
We apologize for the difficulties you encountered in attempting to access the article needed from [Journal Name]. We are still working to resolve the access problem, but in the meantime are sending you the document you indicated needing. [The language in the first paragraph varies, depending on the situation]
Please note that this article is protected by copyright and licensing terms. This copy should be for your own personal use and not be distributed further. [These last two sentences should be included somewhere in the email every time we send a PDF of an article or other copyright-protected or licensed information].
Thanks for your patience.
If you have any questions, feel free to talk to Lisa.
Hi all,
I just found out that a Google roduct, Google Accelerator, can affect how our users are able to access our licensed content. This could be an issue for the future as more users experiment with new Google add-ons.
Google Accelerator is a product that makes web pages load faster by using the Google network. One caveat of using this is that if you are trying to get to our licensed links via Google Accelerator, your IP range is going to be a Google IP (since Google is proxying the connections), rather than through our proxy server Floyd.
This issue just came up in InfoPoint regarding a person on campus who was trying to get into something from PsychArticles via Google Accelerator and he was denied access due to his IP range being not part of the U's.
According to the Google Accelerator help page, there is a way to set it up so that Google will not proxy a certain site. This could be onerous if one has to do this for all of our licensed content so the best option may be to tell users not to use Google Accelerator to access library resources.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.
Lisa