Bio-Med Reference

Clinics are working from PubMed

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to let you know that the Clinics titles are linking correctly from PubMed to the MDConsult Eclinics page (many thanks to Janet for working her SFX magic).

-Nicole

SciFinder Scholar problems

Hello science librarians,

I received a couple of calls this morning from people unable to access SciFinder Scholar. They have older versions of SciFinder on their computers that no longer work as of January 30 and need to upgrade to the 2007 version. You may get similar questions at your reference desks.

Meghan

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Meghan Lafferty
Chemistry & Chemical Engineering Librarian Science & Engineering Library
University of Minnesota
108 Walter Library
Minneapolis MN 55455
Tel.: 612-624-9399
FAX: 612-625-5583
E-mail: mlaffert@umn.edu
IM (AIM, GTalk, MSN, Y!): umchemlib

Tech Stop: Drop-in computer help in Coffman

I just heard about OIT's Tech Stop over in Coffman, which might be a good thing to know about if students need computer help beyond the scope of what we cover in our library. Here's the website: http://oit.umn.edu/techstop/

"Tech Stop offers walk-in assistance with and support for University technology services including e-mail client configuration; Internet password changes—including a self-service password change station for students; Symantec AntiVirus installation or assistance; consultations on virus removal; ResNet connection problem troubleshooting; updating drivers; common good software such as e-mail, UMCal, WebVista, and Moodle; and much more, including general "how do I get started with…." questions."

Hours are linked on the left hand side of the Tech Stop website. I might just be behind the times in not knowing this existed, but it looks like a valuable referral resource!!

Liz

Clarification on access to the Clinics

Hi Everyone,

I have one clarification regarding our online access to the Clinics titles. The databases affected by this issue are primarily PubMed and Medline. I found a citation that was in Cinahl (Ebscohost platform) and PubMed; I had no problem accessing it from Cinahl but encountered the Elsevier Article Locator page when I clicked on the Find It link from PubMed. As Emily mentioned if users have a citation for a clinics title they should use the E-journals catalog whenever possible.

-Nicole

Journal updates - Frontiers in Bioscience & Clinics series

Hi all,

I'm passing along a couple of quick e-journal access updates on problems we've encountered at Reference over the past few days:

1. Frontiers in Bioscience - Most of you probably already know that our access to this title has been limited to 2009 only because of spiking costs. We'll be instructing the Circulation students to say the following by way of explanation: "Frontiers in Bioscience changed their subscription policy with 2009, making it cost prohibitive for us to provide access to any but the current year. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Feel free to direct patrons to ILL; however, keep in mind that we're limited to 5 requests from the most recent 5 years per title before we begin asking patrons to assume copyright charges. We'll hit that ceiling fast for this title (we're at 2 requests right now).

2. The "Clinics" series - Nicole is working on fix for this, but for the time being, you should advise users to access these titles directly through E-Journals, rather than through a database. Otherwise the user will end up having to link through Find It twice.

Thanks,
Emily

Printing from the Reference Desk

We have now installed a print option (CCR_Q) to allow us to send jobs to the print release stations from the Reference Desk for patrons. This is useful for patrons who will be using U Cards or copy cards for payment. (Unfortunately, once money has been deposited onto cards, we cannot debit money from the cards except via self-serve prints or copies.)

Please make sure to ask patrons how they prefer to pay for their prints when printing from the Reference Desk. If they don't have a U Card or prefer not to purchase a copy card, print normally and Circulation will ring them through the cash register. If they will be using a card, select File > Print (Ctrl-P) and then change the drop-down menu in the Print window to CCR_Q. Their prints will be sent to the print release station where the patron can retrieve them.

If you have any questions or concerns about printing or copying, please feel free to contact me.

Cheers,
Emily

Reference Computer to be upgraded to Office 2007

Hi everyone,

This is just an FYI that I've requested that the Reference Desk computer be upgraded to Office 2007. For anyone who hasn't yet made the transition, SED will be offering a number of up-coming Office 2007 classes. There are also free e-learning courses from Microsoft that are being made available through the University Technology Training Center (UTTC).

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thanks,
Emily

EndNote Moodle Page

If you have patrons with EndNote questions, this Moodle site may be a very useful tool. This note came through the AP list.

Liz

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Hi All,

I'm not sure how many questions come the way of service points regarding EndNote, but I've put the script that I use in my EndNote for Science and Engineering workshop into a Moodle page and thought I'd share it with the larger library community.

I created it largely as a supplement for the workshop I teach, but if patrons are asking questions about EndNote you could send them this link directly to get them started. If you don't get any questions regarding EndNote, please feel free to disregard. If you have any feedback about the page, I'd love to hear it.

Otherwise, enjoy! https://moodle.umn.edu/course/view.php?id=3866

Jon
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Jon Jeffryes
Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, and Standards Librarian
Physical Sciences and Engineering Library
University of Minnesota Libraries
108 Walter Library
117 Pleasant Street S.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Email: jeffryes@umn.edu
Phone: 612-625-3814
IM: umjonlib
Office: 335 Walter Library

Reference Handbook

I have taken most of the documents that were under the clear plastic sheet at the old Reference Desk and placed them in a maroon binder and labeled it "Reference Handbook." The binder will be located to the right Reference computer A along with the phone books. The binder currently contains a user guide for Desk Tracker, a list of active directory passwords for logging non-University clients onto public work stations, phone numbers for computer assistance, instructions for registering patrons for active directory accounts, a list of NLM/LC call number assignments, passwords for logging into various IM accounts, current HSL Liaison assignments, the RefWorks Group User Code, Instructions on how to get to the Bio-Medical Library, a list of resources available at Computer Labs on campus and a revised version of Opening and Closing Procedures for the Reference Desk. If you have other suggestions of documents that should be added to the Binder let me know.

Del

Lost Internet Connections & Saving Files (Macs)

Hello everyone,

As you may or may not already know, we've been experiencing connection problems with the Macs recently. One of our Circulation students (Amy) wrote a post for our Circ blog about it, and I thought I'd pass it along:

"So as most of us know, the Mac computers will sometimes lose internet connection and have to be restarted to get it back. However, when the Mac computers are restarted, all information saved on the desktop will be lost. To get around this, patrons can save their work to the "macuser" folder on the desktop.

So when patrons ask how to get internet back, it would be a good idea to ask patrons if they have anything saved on the computer before we tell them to restart it, as they will lose their work.

[Update] Another possible solution is to turn on the AirPort on the Mac Unit in the upper right hand corner. The icon resembles an empty quarter circle. It may take a few minutes for the internet to be available again, but this avoids restarting the unit."

Thanks,
Emily

Did you know? Free PhotoDelivery Exceptions

Today I had a patron call about access to an article for which we were supposed to have online full text but due to an error wasn't available. She was happy to find out that under these circumstances we will fill the article for free through our PhotoDelivery service. In order to avoid charges, the patron will need to put a note in the Special Instructions field of the PhotoDelivery form (https://hsllibs.wufoo.com/forms/photodelivery/), indicating that the article was unavailable online due to a linking or publisher's error.

I just wanted to pass this info along to anyone who might not yet be aware of this new option.

Thanks!
Emily

Exporting data from RefWorks to Excel

I've had two questions recently at the desk about analyzing references by geographic location. I've managed to assist these patrons by helping them export data from RefWorks into Excel. Data can then be sorted and summarized in Excel. In each case, "Country of Publication" was the field we were interested in. State level data is also available, but requires manually identifying the state from each "Author Address" field. In my opinion, it is easier to do this in Excel, rather than pulling up each individual reference in a database.

I thought I'd pass this strategy along, in case it might be helpful for someone else. Also, if anyone has a better approach, I'd love to hear it!

Cheers,
Emily

Instructions for exporting data from RefWorks:

1. From the RefWorks toolbar, select Tools > Export References
2. Select folder to export
3. Select Tab Delimited format
4. Click Export to Text File
5. Click Download it to open the file in your browser
6. Your browser window should now be filled with text. Select File > Save Page As...
7. Change the file's extension to .xls and Save
8. Open the file using Excel
9. Sort and summarize as usual in Excel

EFS changes are afoot

This only tangentially affects staff working reference, but I wanted to make you aware that our copy service will no longer accept verbal EFS numbers for self-serve prints and copies after 12/31/08. Instead, over the next month or so, we will be transitioning department-funded staff and faculty to departmental copy cards, which are special copy cards tied to EFS numbers that act like credit cards. Departments will be invoiced each month for any charges made against the card.

We have begun distributing informational handouts to patrons in the library and informed departmental accounting staff by email, as well. I'll put a copy of the handout at Reference, in case you're interested in specifics.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or concerns!

Thanks,
Emily

Recent RefWorks Interruption in Service

RefWorks has recently been experiencing some technical outages due to hardware upgrades as well as hosting service maintenance. It was not our intention to interrupt service however, it appears that there were some difficulties getting the new hardware on line.

If you have users that are still experiencing issues logging into RefWorks, please first consider restarting your computer to refresh network settings and clear active internet files. If rebooting does not resolve the login problem, please report any outstanding issues to support@refworks.com.

While we do not anticipate any further interruptions in service at this time, we do appreciate your support and understanding during this period.

Christine Capen
Director Technical Services

Find Links & the Clinics Titles

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to let you know that we are experiencing problems with the Find It links when trying to connect to a citation from an article index for the MDConsult Eclinics titles. If you use Find It for an Eclinics title from an article index you are routed to an Elsevier page instead of a MDConsult page. This problem is not occurring when using the E-Journals catalog, just the indexes. I will be working to resolve this problem, but it may take some time to track down where the problem lies. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Nicole