State budget woes arise again

We thought we had pulled through without a hitch (or cut) in the databases that the state pays for, but we sighed with relief a little too soon. iConn (the CT digital library organization) just announced that they are cutting CINAHL, Westlaw (Campus Research), AP Photo Archive, and the Boston Globe, as of Oct. 1 (yes, that's this Thursday).

We are picking up CINAHL ourselves, so there should be no interruption of access.

Our law librarian recommends the following for law related searching:

For Westlaw cases and statutes, try these sites: Findlaw http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/ (link goes directly to cases and codes portion of the site); Justia http://www.justia.com/index.html ; or Public Law Online Library http://www.plol.org . Academic Search Premier indexes several law reviews.

For the AP Photo Archive, try Google Images, Googles new Image search for news, ArtStor, or the image search feature in some of the Ebsco databases like Academic Search Premier.

For Westlaw business news, try Business Source Premier.

For local news (Westlaw), try the Hartford Courant (Proquest Newspapers) and General Reference Center Gold.

For the Boston Globe, try General Reference Center Gold.

MySCSU, Vista, webserver down

Something happened to the MySCSU server which took most Internet services down this afternoon. As I write this, Web access is back, but the campus web server (southernct.edu) is down. MySCSU and Vista are still down, and Banner may be down as well. Faculty Exchange Webmail seems to be up.

If you need the library catalog, go directly to http://www.consuls.org/ (including e-reserves). If you need the databases, go to http://libguides.southernct.edu/ , choose General, and click into the Databases guide. The alphabetical links should work.

If I here anything else, I'll post it.

Update (9/17): Everything seems to be back to normal. If you have any lingering difficulties, be sure to contact the Helpdesk.

MySCSU Upgrade will block access Fri & Sat

After several postponements, they are finally going to do a planned upgrade to MySCSU. Starting tonight (Fri, 9/11) at 5pm, MySCSU (and all related services) will be down until 5pm Saturday, 9/12 (24 hours!) This includes:

• MySCSU email
• MySCSU portal
• U-Drive
• home.southernct.edu websites
• VISTA (e-Learning Vista courseware)
  
• Banner Web

This should not affect campus network logins (computer labs, faculty webmail, remote access) or library logins (e-reserves, databases).