The library is currently running a short trial of a course booking management application – LibCal (by Springshare, the same outfit that we use for LibGuides a.k.a. subject guides).
We’re looking at this as a possible replacement of the in-house system we are currently using to manage the advertising and booking of library courses/classes/workshops (e.g. the Book a library course page and it’s admin module).
We have a selection of wonderful library staff officially evaluating LibCal functions, but if anyone else is curious – here is a link to our demo site http://canterbury.libcal.com/ This is the page we would potentially be using to advertise current library courses/classes/workshops we offer (with some modifications including less garish category colours). Please feel free to have a play with the various options of filtering etc.
You can book into the example sessions/events if you like.
If you have any feedback you’d like to pass on, or would like to know more (e.g. about the admin side of course booking via LibCal) – please flick me an email
If you come across items on the catalogue with collection codes like ebqa1, ebqa2, ebqb-c2, these are being used to break the EPS monograph collections up for inventory purposes. These items will be at their usual place on the shelves (in call number order) and will have the same issue periods/request rules etc. As the inventory on each lot of items is completed we’ll be moving the items back to their original collection codes.
Oxford Music and Art online sites are currently experiencing technical difficulties (when you attempt to access them you eventually get an internal server error). This from Oxford University Press at 1:40pm:
“we are currently experiencing access issues with Oxford Art and Oxford Music Online. We are doing our best to get these back up in the next hour.”
Hi to everyone who is using the newer AskLive client.
LibraryH3lp released an update to the new client in late July and have added a feature called “auto-logout”. This feature enables you to set a time limit for your AskLive session after which the system will automatically log you out. You’ll see the option when you login – it is part of the “Choose Staffing Assignments” pop up screen where you choose what queues you are going to be staffing in your session (see screenshot below). The default setting is to not use auto logout – if you click on the “never auto-logout” checkbox to deselect it you’ll get a prompt to set how many hours and minutes you want to stay logged on for.
The Education Library have been doing small, lighthearted displays with a new theme each month. For those of you who never get the chance to visit, Hugh has provided some photographs.
We have now put a mechanism in place that will allow borrowers to opt out of library e-txt notification. Customer services team members that deal with borrower registration will have the Horizon privileges to edit the setting. The front desk Horizon logins will allow you to see if the setting is/is not in place from the Edit Borrower screen (last page). See the “Opting out of E-txts” wiki page for more details.
As this is a new thing, please let us know if you encounter any problems. An important thing to note is that borrowers who opt out of e-txts will not get the same degree of notification RE recalled items so will need to be extra vigilant in monitoring their accounts.
“The phone system has experienced system issues today, affecting calls to and from Dovedale and Ilam campuses.
As part of the resolution of these issues, we plan to undertake system maintenance this evening. A brief outage will occur shortly after 6pm (for approximately 15 minutes) between Ilam and Dovedale phones.
We apologise for any inconvenience this maintenance may cause.”
You may have noticed a problem getting to external websites this morning.
ITS are displaying the following message in Assyst RE the internet access problems.
“There is currently a problem with internet access; currently we are experiencing intermittent internet access. Our staff are investigating now and we will provide an update in 1 hour”
This message was added 10 minutes ago. We’ll keep you posted RE any updates from ITS.
ITS have just sent out the following communication
“We are currently experiencing an issue that is affecting incoming/outgoing email to/from the University.
Engineers are working on the problem now.
We will provide an update at 3:30pm.”
This will be affecting emails sent to non university addresses (and you may not have received emails sent to you from outside of the university). Emails from the Assyst system also seem to be affected so if you have processed any email actions through Assyst you may need to resend the emails once the problem has been fixed.
I will update this post once ITS have sent out an update.
Unfortunately CRCnetBASE vendors have blocked us from their database because a UC user exceeded the download limit (300 pdf downloads in one session).
If you try to access the database from our databases page or catalogue you’ll get an error messgage:
“client IP is blocked because: More than 300 PDF or full text downloads in a session Blocked IPs: 132.181.002.066 – 132.181.002.066”
We are chasing this up with the vendor (and the offender) and hope to get the block lifted soon.
This is no help to people off-campus or in student workrooms or wifi network but, if you are on campus and need to access CRCnetBASE you can get in using the URL http://www.crcnetbase.com
