Kia ora koutou

Our research repository isn’t feeling too good this morning and the site is not currently working.  I’m working on getting it back up and running.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (= the entire Library Digital Services team for today and tomorrow)

Kia ora koutou

In case anyone is planning to do some maintenance on their Subject Guides on the morning of Wednesday 22nd December.

Springshare are doing some scheduled maintenance/updates from 8:30 – 10:30 am, during which the admin side of LibGuides will be unavailable.

Subject guides will still be available via the public view, so students shouldn’t experience any outages while accessing them.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

IT are pushing out a repair on staff and post-grad student Windows 10 PC’s tonight (wed 8th Dec)  from 6-6:30pm.  Once the repair is completed computers will prompt for a restart.

If you’re working tonight,  you won’t be forced to restart, but we recommend you restart the computer you’re using before you leave work for the day (including front desk computer) so the update can complete.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

As a result of a cyber attack attempt on Friday night IT have changed the way they allow apps to connect to Outlook – they are now forbidding the basic authentication method.  You may have noticed the email apps on your phone etc. prompting you to sign in.  In some cases you might not be able to get the app to connect again if it uses a deprecated/less secure method of connecting and may need to investigate an alternative.  If you use your email via an app of any sort you should check the connection is still working.

In my case – using the gmail app on my android phone, I had to delete my exchange account and add it again.  Thankfully this was very quick and just required sign in via Microsoft login (work or school account).

Alas LibCal appointments (used by subject librarians and other student advisors across UC) was affected by this and we are now working with IT to enable a newer way of connecting to Outlook which will hopefully be set up by the end of today.  There may be some students who have booked appointments with people who are on leave or busy in Outlook today.  We have emailed all the LibCal appointments users about this.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

We are currently in the intermediate stages of our Open Athens implementation (Open Athens will replace ezproxy for controlling access/sign in to library databases and e-resources at some stage next year).

The Open Athens implementation team (staffed by EBSCO) are busy setting up access to many of our databases/resources for us (Library Digital Services) to test.  Once a connection is set up it is technically “live” and can be found by patrons who stumble across various “sign in via academic institution” or “sign in via Open Athens” buttons/options on the webpages for journals etc.  Since we are a member of Open Athens now, University of Canterbury now appears in the dropdown lists of institutions , so it looks like it should be possible to sign in to our users.

However, access is not actually live to all UC users at the moment (just a selection of accounts for testing) so users will be denied login – you may find them reporting errors like the following after completing the Microsoft sign in:

AADSTS50105: The signed in user ‘abc123@uclive.ac.nz’ is not assigned to a role for the application ‘e481de8f-1827-4048-8e0a-fae90a13b977′(OpenAthens).

If you get such reports on AskLIVE etc.  please direct the user to the library database/catalogue link or Multisearch to connect to the database/journal/article they were trying to access and they will get access via ezproxy.  You can tell them the method they tried to use is not currently active yet but will be a thing in 2022 :).

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

The Library Access and Collections team (including interloans and digi services) will be out of the office today from 12:15 until about 3:30pm for our tina Kirihimete (Christmas lunch) at Raspberry Cafe .

If there’s a library systems emergency Donna Barber and Peter Kennedy have the Teams app on their phones and Romy Forrer has S4B on hers.  Peter and Romy’s phone numbers are also in the supervisor’s handbook.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of LAC)

Kia ora koutou

As of 22nd November we have changed the way users sign in to Westlaw databases.  Instead of hitting the usual ezproxy login page (a.k.a. Remote Access Login) they should now be directed to the Tuakiri login screen.

For this to happen, links constructed for LEARN, library database pages and catalogue records have to be created a different way.  We have now added a Westlaw section to both versions of the stable linkmakers about the place:

1. LEARN – https://learn.canterbury.ac.nz/mod/page/view.php?id=1844585
2. Intranet (old/original intranet) – https://intranet.canterbury.ac.nz/library/linking/linking.shtml

The westlaw linkmaker is designed to use links from the Westlaw platform “copy link” permalink buttons only.  It will reject some browser address url style links.
If you get feedback from academics trying to use rejected links that are stable please let Library Digital Services know and we’ll tweak the accepted forms of starting URLs.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services Team)

Kia ora koutou

IT are making some changes to student accounts that will potentially break access to Lexis Advance database.  They are progressively working through student accounts starting 25/26 November, pausing for the IT systems change freeze for exam results, then picking back up again on December 10.

Affected students (students who have used Lexis Advance previously and whose accounts have been updated by IT) will see a 113 error message when they try to log in to Lexis Advance.  This error needs to be resolved at the Lexis end.
We are working with Lexis Nexis to bulk update accounts and when this is done login should work smoothly for students who have been updated and those who have not.

This will likely take a few days for their technical support to process. – if you get anyone reporting this issue please let Digital Services team  know and we’ll ask Lexis to prioritise fixing their account.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services team)

Kia ora koutou

You will have received an email from Paul O’Flaherty on 23rd November about the new intranet/Tū ki te tahi and how it will be the preset homepage for staff on browsers on your work computer(s).  This change, which comes in to effect today, will be picked up by your computer the next time you restart after 10am today.

The email did not mention another consequence of this setting (besides not being able to set your own homepage anymore):

• Browsers will no longer default to the previous sessions tabs.  Users will not be able to change this setting.

If you are like me and like to use this setting to remind yourself of what you were working on on previous days, or just generally find it useful, you will need to find a workaround.  It should be possible to restore tabs from the last session you closed via History.

Ngā mihi,

Romy

***22/11 – updated to remove statement about PJH guards taking details – all affected students need to report to the security office to extend their cards***

Kia ora koutou

The cardax system security use to control door access, including EPS entry as of Monday 15 and PJH foyer swipe (for building user number control) looks at JADE/enrolment system to determine building access.  Unfortunately this means any students whose course end dates have passed (e.g. most semester 2 courses), will be denied entry by this system.   We’ve never had this problem pre- COVID since library access has always been open to everyone during opening hours (also never been in Alert Level 2 over summer).

To get around this issue students can go to the security office and have their card access extended until end December.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)