Kia ora koutou,

This weekend a number of ProQuest products will be temporarily unavailable due to infrastructure upgrades, security enhancements, and general maintenance. This is taking place Saturday 16 July from 2pm to 10pm (UTC Sunday 17 July from 2am to 10am).

This will mainly affect ProQuest databases the Library subscribes to, for example ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I‎, and ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times‎.

Communication of affected databases has not been great. ProQuest chat confirmed to me on Friday that their update page did not list all the relevant information and that the appropriate team would be notified. The page is still incorrect as of this post, but may be useful for updates on the day: https://support.proquest.com/s/article/ProQuest-Notifications-and-Updates?language=en_US

Their rule of thumb for the maintenance window is anything you access with the url www.proquest.com (including the old url search.proquest.com) will be unavailable during this time.

Ngā mihi,
Leah Pengelly
Library Systems

Kia ora koutou,

The AKO|LEARN exams search is now working – horray!

Staff and students should now be able to search and download exam PDFs (we still have a delay on the 2021 midyear exams due to corrupted files – Library Systems will continue to deal with these enquiries).

The Future Learning & Development team who now look after the search have been very responsive to the issues logged through ServiceNow. If there are any more problems please encourage reporting this way, or you can report on the user’s behalf.

Ngā mihi,
Leah Pengelly
Library Systems

Kia ora koutou,

We have had reports from staff and students about issues accessing the new AKO|LEARN exams search block. This has been reported to ITS.

The issue occurs after searching for a course and selecting a PDF. Instead of the PDF opening a new LEARN page opens – it’s a bit of a jumble of enrolments and the Library exam papers page.

There isn’t a work around currently (apologies). I will update here when I have more information from ITS.

Ngā mihi,
Leah Pengelly
Library Systems

Tēnā koutou,

After a few months of back and forth the Library has now passed the exams search baton to Future Learning and Development and the Examinations Office.

A new exams search block has been created for AKO|LEARN and is live for academics to add to their courses. The exams will be available for the most recent three years only – a cap which is more consistent with other universities around Aotearoa.

Students will also be able to find the block for themselves. It hasn’t been confirmed yet where it may sit within the AKO|LEARN environment for discovery, but the library webpage will be amended today and include the new link  https://learn.canterbury.ac.nz/blocks/ucpreviousexams/search.php

You will see the AKO|LEARN block still needs some editing – for example removing the Library contact details – but it has been decided to go ahead now as the Library search relied on ezproxy, and the exam period is now over so this shouldn’t cause any problems.

And finally, responsibility for uploading exam papers is being taken over by the Examinations Office, which feels like a much better fit. Questions about adding or withholding exams should be directed there examinations@canterbury.ac.nz. Pending an upcoming meeting, it is likely that Library Systems will retain the digital exams we currently hold as the master copy, and transfer to the Records Office when appropriate.

Ngā mihi,
Leah Pengelly
Library Systems

Kia ora koutou,

Prior to switching Ebook Central over to Open Athens I’ve been investigating the use of the Bookshelf function by UC accounts. Once the switch to OA has been made users will be asked to create new accounts – and their bookshelves will not be carried over. They should instead pre-emptively export their data.

We’d predicted limited use, however after receiving stats from ProQuest this turns out not to be the case. Great that it’s being used, however the export process is somewhat manual, including needing to individually export any annotations per book. I had pressed for more information and asked if there was at all a bulk import/upload option. Unfortunately users will need to recreate their Bookshelf folders and add books using the export csv urls.

I’ll be putting out comms tomorrow via Library News, Tū ki te tahi and Tūpono about the upcoming change and how to export data (just in case I get a final reply overnight with a magical solution).

ProQuest have a short article about saving your Bookshelf before an authentication change that would be worth reviewing if you think you’ll get questions from staff and students. To the Subject Librarians in particular – if you know any frequent users of this function please encourage them to export their shelves.

Post-switching Ebook Central to OA there is an option to merge accounts for those who have not saved their data. However, it requires contacting ProQuest, providing details, and is not guaranteed to retrieve everything. They also have a short article about this.

Ngā mihi,

Leah Pengelly (Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou,

A clever student recently found the app version of Naxos music library (there is also one for our other subscription – Naxos music library World. Both are searchable in Apple and Google app stores). They found that the initial setup requires a login code.

This has now been set up. A note has been added to the databases page with a link to our secured passwords page.

The database’s five login limit includes those via the app. Unlike the browser – where logging out is required – closing the app will log the user off.

Ngā mihi,

Library Digital Services (Leah)

Tēnā koutou,

There is an ongoing issue in Summon of ‘ghost scrolling’ or, as described in the Summon forum ‘demon scrolling’. Basically you can only scroll so far (typically to result #44) before the numbers start jumping around. It is then also impossible to scroll back to the top.

This is being investigated by the Summon team. I have submitted another case.

The only advice from others experiencing this problem is to jiggle your mouse while scrolling (this kind of works if all you want is to return to the top of the page).

While we’re waiting on a solution I suggest recommending students utilise the facets to narrow down their search criteria. If broader searching is required to do this via databases.

We will post an update when there is one. And if there are any other handy tricks please post them below!

Ngā mihi,

Leah

Library Digital Services

Mōrena,

The technical issues with Scopus search function have now been resolved. Phew!

The team at Scopus have asked that if issues continue to:

1. Try another browser
2. Clear cache and cookies of the browser

Kia pai to rā,

Library Digital Services

Kia ora folks,

Scopus are experiencing technical issues and search is not available.

Their customer service are aware of the issue and it is being worked on as a priority, however they do not yet have an ETA for when this will be resolved.

At a glance it seems article links in LEARN are still working.

We’ll let you know when Scopus search is back up and running.

Ngā mihi,

Library Digital Services

Kia ora koutou,

Mid-December 2021 the New Summon Experience: User Interface (UI) Improvements were released and rolled out to all users. Romy made some initial changes to the generic interface which you will have seen, and MultiSearch is now fully updated to reflect the design library webpages (within customisation confines).

Other features that have been improved or switched on include:

• Refine your search layout
• Evaluation labels (ie green indicator for available, peer-reviewed)
• Enhanced ‘did you mean’ (there have been mixed reviews on this in the forums, so feedback is very welcome)
• Additional advanced search options

Release notes can be found on the ExLibris Knowledge Centre for those curious. Summon have another release due soon with some additional UI and bug fixes, so watch this space.

Ngā mihi,

Leah