Thursday, August 10, 2006

Going down again!

Sorry folks, CONSULS will be going down again. We hope it will just be from 5pm to 6pm today (Eastern time.)

In the meanwhile, for book searches try this handy little search box OCLC just set up for their WorldCat.org search.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Reminder: CONSULS down on Thursday

Just a quick reminder that the CONSULS library catalog will be down from 8am, Thursday, Aug. 3, 2006 for most or all of the day for upgrades. This will include authentication for databases from off campus, so please plan your database use carefully.

On campus users will be able to access the databases through this page: http://library.scsu.ctstateu.edu/unproxied.html. You can also use either Open WorldCat from OCLC or RedLightGreen from RLG to search for books and see if the results are available at local libraries (including SCSU). If you are on one of the campuses and want to find a particular book, I'd suggest using the FirstSearch WorldCat database (on campus link--it should work on any campus) and looking at the call number in the record. Most of us use similar call numbers to the ones in WorldCat, so you should be able to at least find the right shelf. Just remember that you might have to check more than one collection: WorldCat won't tell you if we shelved something in Reference, or Stacks, or Oversized, etc. (And children's fiction will be shelved using the Dewey Decimal number, not the LC number--just to confuse things a little bit more!)

This might also be the time to check out what's available through your local library. Many states now have a nice selection of databases available to all public library card holders. In CT, that's the iConn service, available to all public, school, and higher education libraries. iConn includes general article databases, like InfoTrac, newspaper databases from Proquest and Lexis-Nexis, business resources, like ABI/Inform and Business & Company Resource Center, health databases like CINAHL, and a collection of online subject encyclopedias. Similar collections are available in many states. All you need is your public library card number.