Password post

So much has changed that I thought I should do a fresh password post.

There are now 3 ways to get into library resources from off campus:

1. You can log into the library catalog and databases using the same login as MySCSU, eLearning Vista, and the campus lab computers. Please see the Password Reset form, or a OIT Service Desk for help with your network login.

1. Use the login boxes on the LEFT at http://www.consuls.org/patroninfo, the Login or My Record link in the CONSULS Library Catalog, or the databases login screen.
2. Enter your Network Username and Password (MySCSU/Vista login).
3. Be sure to pick the correct campus!
4. Click the Submit button.
5. Problems with your Network Login need to be directed to the IT Helpdesk.

Note: If you have recently reset your password, the new password may take some time to "migrate" to the library login. Please try your old password, or use the Library PIN or Remote access in the meanwhile.

If you mistype and need to try again, the campus choice will reset to Central. Be sure to choose the correct campus on each attempt.

2. You can also use your University ID number and Library PIN to login.

1. Create your Library PIN at http://www.consuls.org/patroninfo, the Login or My Record link in the CONSULS Library Catalog, or the databases login screen.
2. Enter your ID number in the login boxes on the RIGHT.
3. Leave the PIN box blank and click the Submit button.
4. If you have a current library account and you do not have a PIN, you should get a form to create a PIN.
5. Your Library PIN should be at least 6 characters long, and use numbers, letters, or both. The library PIN is not case sensitive. DO NOT use "special" characters, such as *, #, or ! DO NOT use repeating patterns (such as 121212 -- dates are sometimes a problem, Jan 1, 1999 = 010199, for instance). You will need to enter the exact PN in both boxes.
6. Click Submit.
7. If you get an error message about your PIN being "not complex" enough, try a different PIN. Remember, do not use "special characters" or repeating patterns.
8. If you get an error message about "invalid" or "expired" entries, you may already have a PIN (possibly created by accident) or your library account may be blocked. For "invalid" entries, try the "Forgot your PIN" link below the PIN box. That will send a message to the email we have on file. If you do not get an email, or get a different error message, call the Circulation Desk at 203-392-5756 to check the status of your account and/or to delete an old or accidentally created PIN.

Video tutorial on creating a Library PIN (Flash plugin required).

3. An alternative route into the databases from offcampus is available through the campus Remote server. You will still need to log into CONSULS to view e-reserves, and request and renew books.

1. Log on to https://remote.southernct.edu/ using your Network username and password.
2. In the upper right, type library.southernct.edu into the Browse box and click the Go button.
3. Go to the databases and search without having to log in again!

Note: You will not be able to follow any links that go outside the databases or campus website. For outside links, open a new window or tab in your browser and copy the URL's into this new window/tab.

Accessing the Remote server on campus may provide different options than off campus access.

Passwords

Welcome back everyone, and welcome to the annual password post!

Passwords have gotten simpler, but with a few twists. Last year, MySCSU (with Banner), Vista, and the general computer logon were synchronized to a "Network ID". You can also download software (like MS Office with Windows and Mac), from the SCSU Software Share site, and log onto the wireless campus network. For those off campus, this will also get you into https://remote.southernct.edu/ (network file access and services--some access and services are only available off campus), and your southernct.edu webspace (you can also access your web files via the remote site from off campus).

Twist #1: The new student email, Owls Mail, is on the Microsoft Live system. That password is currently separate, but will be synchronized in a few weeks. In the meanwhile, be sure to 1) use a separate, non-identical password, and 2) add a separate (non-SCSU) email to your account so that you can get your password changes if needed. Until the synchronization happens, SCSU IT won't be able to help you with your Owls password.

If you need to change your Network password, you can visit an IT Service Desk, or use the online form. More help is available by phone (203-392-5123) or email (helpdesk@southernct.edu). Don't forget to identify yourself as an online student if you can't come to campus.


Library access (online databases and resources, library record viewing, online renewal, intra-campus requests, & online reserves) is still via your ID number (70xxxxxx), and a separate library PIN/password. If you don't know your ID number, log into MySCSU and look for Account Information and View SCSU ID Number under Settings on the main MySCSU page. You can set or check your library access via the CONSULS login page. The 'Forgot your PIN?' link on this page will send a link to the email address we have on file, which is whatever is in Banner. If you have not changed your Banner info, it's possible we still have whatever email address you first registered with (i.e. a non-SCSU address). You can change this in the library system by logging in to the CONSULS Library Catalog and selecting the Modify Personal Info button on the right. Email is the only thing you can update online (though, of course, you have to be able to log in in the first place.) You can also call the Circulation Desk at 203-392-5756 to wipe out an old PIN, so that you can set a new one. They can also help you update your contact information. This will not update your email address in Banner, so you might want to check that in MySCSU (Settings, View email address(es)). More on setting/resetting your Library PIN.

Twist #2: The new ILL system uses your network ID and password to login. There also seems to be a lag in the synchronization here, so if you have recently updated your Network password and can't get into ILL, try your old password.

Twist #3: You can use the Browse function in https://remote.southernct.edu (offcampus only) to access the library databases. This makes it look like you are on campus, so the databases will let you right in. Some materials may not be available, since there restrictions on web access; but it's a good backup if you are having PIN problems.

That's all I have for passwords this semester.

Not exactly the annual password post

Whoohooo! It's finally happening. We are going to a much reduced password system, making my annual password post almost unnecessary.

On Feb 17 (next Wed.) the Windows network and MySCSU passwords will finally merge. Everything to do with SCSU, except the library, will be accessible via a single sign-on. (And even the library is partly accessible this way.)

Unfortunately, it looks like it is the Windows password that will be the "real" one as of 6am next Wednesday. According to the IT announcement: "If you don’t remember your Windows password, you should reset it before February 17." So if you have not logged onto a campus computer, or your remote files (including your campus webpages) recently, you might want to contact the Helpdesk at 203-392-5123 or helpdesk@southernct.edu before 2/17.

However, once you have this straight, you will be able to log into campus computers, MySCSU, Vista, your webspace and network files, Banner (via MySCSU) using the same username and password. You will still need your ID number and LibraryPIN to log into the CONSULS library catalog and the databases (aside from the remote login detailed at the link above.)

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).

New Library URL's

Hi folks, long time no write. (Sorry.)

Don't worry, the library home page is still http://library.southernct.edu/

The Proxy Server (what allows you to log into the databases from off campus) got a new URL at the end of the summer. (No, it wasn't our idea.) You now have the security of logging in to the databases securely.

If you have old links that go directly to the databases, or to articles (etc.) in the databases, those links will not work now. If you like to make your own edits, you'll need to change the .csulib.ctstateu.edu/ to .www.consuls.org/ so that a link to JSTOR was http://0-www.jstor.org.csulib.ctstateu.edu/ and is now http://0-www.jstor.org.www.consuls.org/

If that made no sense to you, just go back into the databases using the links on the library website and find your database/article again. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll see if I can find it.

The second URL change is for the research guides. We are now using a service called LibGuides for our subject research guides and help pages. So if you had linked to one of our guides, you will need to use a new link. The old pages are getting redirect notes, and the Research Guide link on the library homepage now goes to the new site: http://libguides.southernct.edu/

We think we've found most of the old links on our site and changed them, but if you find something that doesn't work, please let me know!

New way of logging into the databases

Hi folks, long time no write. Sorry about that. Things have been extraordinarily busy and a lot of things are changing at the library. Retirements, budget cuts, redistribution of resources and responsibilities...it's been a challenge and will continue to be so for a while yet.

But anyway, the real reason for this post is that we just discovered a new way of logging into our databases from off campus. Very quietly implemented and improved over the last year or so are Remote services (VPN) from IT. When you log into the Remote server, it acts as if you are logged into a campus computer, no matter were in the world you are. You can view your network files (including web pages), use some campus resources, and browse the campus website. (From on campus you see different options.)

You log in using your username (as with MySCSU & Vista) and your Windows/network password. The network password is only used on campus, so most distance students will not have one. If you don't have one, or haven't logged into a campus computer (including Remote) for over 3 months, go to the Helpdesk website (http://helpdesk.southernct.edu/) and choose Accounts and Email. Then choose Windows, and then Password Reset. Complete the form, then got to the Remote site, https://remote.southernct.edu/ (watch the 's' in https -- this is a secure site). Log in using your username and the password you just set. Once logged in, you can change your password to match your MySCSU/Vista password. (IT tells me they are working on a single signon, so this multiple password thing will shortly get better.)

Once you are logged in all the way, you should see a list of services and sites, and, up in the upper right, a box labeled Browse. In this box, enter the library's web address, library.southernct.edu and enter. You should see the library web site underneath a banner with Southern, a URL address bar, and a small toolbar. At this point, you can use the databases as if you were on campus, without having to use your ID and Library PIN. The one catch is that you can't leave the databases or the campus website. Any outside web links within the databases will be blocked. (You can, of course, copy them and open another browser window to use them.)

This is brand new to us, and we aren't quite sure of the full limits of the service. Please let me know if you have trouble. I tested this last night on a Mac with Firefox, and didn't have any trouble. This won't completely replace the Library PIN, which will still be needed for e-reserves, and if you are using a database with lots of outgoing links, logging in the PIN way will be much easier. But at least you now have an alternative.

Have fun, and I promise to try and post more often!

Problems with JSTOR and ScienceDirect PDF's

We are having some issues with JSTOR and ScienceDirect PDF's on campus. We're seeing proxy and subscription error messages. If you get something like that (or other errors, for that matter) from off campus, please contact me.

In the meanwhile, keep track of the articles you are trying to access; I'm pretty confident we will have this fixed soon (as soon as we figure out what the actual problem is!) You may want to try going through the Journal Locator to find the journal and get in that way (this works for ScienceDirect--you can see the HTML version of the article, but not the PDF).

Update: (3pm) Add Emerald and American Chemical Society to the list. HTML versions of articles are fine, it's just the PDF's. If you are using the "Find Article @ SCSU" links and the "Article" link won't work, try the "Journal" link, then find the correct issue for your article. We know what the problem is now (proxy server issue) so we are a giant step towards solving it. Please bear with us!

Update: (11/20) The problem is definitely with our proxy server, so on campus access works by using the direct URL (jstor.org, sciencedirect.com, etc.) If you can get on campus, that will work. If you can't, and you need the article right away, let me know.

Update: (11/21) All fixed now!

Moving the library

Right after finals, the library will start moving into the new building. The library will be closed to the public from May 18-26. No staff-related services will be available during this week: Reference, ILL, Circulation, InterCampus Loans (via CONSULS).

**Databases and other electronic resources will still be available.**

Depending on how efficiently things go (or not), there will likely be some times when we will not have access to our phones and computers, so we may not even catch your voice mails and emails right away. Please be patient. Everyone in the building is moving that week, including the ILS department on the 4th floor and the IT computer labs and offices on the 3rd floor. (Other IT offices and labs will still be open.)

The building, with the new entrance near the Adanti Student Center, will open at 8 am, Tuesday May 27, 2008 for Summer Session A. At that point, all staff will be moved; services will resume and public service desks and labs will reopen. However, all library materials will not be moved at this point. Depending on where the item is that you are looking for, it may take some time to fetch it for you. Eventually, nearly all library materials will be in the new building, accessible for regular use. A few things will be in storage, mostly special collections materials, until the second half of the construction is complete. New maps and guides for the new arrangements will be up on the library web site soon.

Once all materials are in the library, the former building will be torn down to the steel frame. The "renovation" will take a couple of years.

UPDATE (5/12): ILL will continue during the move week

Online forms for materials in storage

Our bound journals and the Oversized and Juvenile collections have been in storage across campus since we got them back after the flood last Thanksgiving. We had to develop a process to fetch books and copy journal articles for what we thought would just be a short time until we moved into the new building. Well, with another semester's delay on the move, we decided that we really needed a better way for people to request materials than just having the paper forms at the library desks.

On the Library home page, under Quick Links on the right, are links to the Journal Retrieval Form and the Oversized and Juvenile Book Retrieval Form.

The Journal Form is only for articles in the bound journals and microfilm. First check the Journal Locator (or use the "Find Article @ SCSU" buttons within the databases). If the article is only available in the "SCSU Print and Microform Collection" (example), click on the "SCSU Print and Microform link" (or the "Journal" link if your came in though the Find Article button) to bring up the CONSULS catalog record (example). Double check to make sure we have the correct year listed under the "Location Bound Journals" or "Microfilm" listings. Note the last volume and date (volume 34, 2006 in the example). Everything from this issue/date back should be bound and will need to be requested. Double check recent issues by clicking on the "Latest Received" link (example). Anything listed as "Arrived" will be on the current issues shelves on the first floor of the library. Don't request these using the Journal Retrieval form. (Students who cannot come to campus, i.e. online only students, can request articles from these journal issues via Interlibrary Loan.)

Most people reading this will want to use the Email option. Be sure to use an email that you check regularly and that has enough room to receive large attached files. Articles will come as PDF files. If you haven't received your article within a couple of days, first check your spam folders, then contact the library--your request may have gone astray in cyberspace.

If your article "should" be available online according to the Journal Locator, and you can't get to it, email me before requesting the article. Your request may be rejected if we don't confirm the error first.

The Book form is for those items listed in the CONSULS catalog as Oversized and Juvenile, marked with an OSC note. If the status of the item is "In Repair", don't request it. These items were damaged in the flood and are not available. Commuting students who are only on campus once or a twice a week should find this most useful, since you can now request a book a day or so before you come to campus and it should be waiting for you at the Circulation Desk when you get to the library. While staff retrieve books several times a day, if possible you should request books at least 24 hours in advance. Books will be held at the Circulation Desk for 10 days and can be checked out and renewed for the normal loan periods (28 days for students, 1 semester for faculty and staff--1 renewal of the same period).

These services will go away when we move into the new building and have space for the collections, again. That is currently scheduled for the end of the Spring '08 semester.

If you have questions, please contact me.

"How Google Books is changing academic research"

Jo Guldi is a Ph.D. candidate in California looking for information on roads in the 18th and 19th centuries. She had, in proper library research fashion, explored the contents of the Yale, Harvard, and British Libraries, California libraries, and ultimately the contents of a large number of North American libraries via interlibrary loan.

Then she stumbled upon Google Books. And turned up 20 new sources related to her research in a single search. That's 20 new sources, sources which she had no idea existed from her library research.

How did this happen? I see two major contributions, one fairly trivial, one major. The trivial one was her search. According to her blog post, she did a search for "roads", a single keyword across the vast collection of Google Books. While she doesn't say so, you can easily limit your search to fully available sources, which generally means out of copyright--mostly pre-1920 or so. This limits the search to works that are most likely to be of use to her, 19th century texts, since those are both out of copyright and in good enough shape to be scanned. In short, she was lucky, and lucky with a search that few librarians would have recommended in a non-subject specific index. (Confession: I actually do these sort of searches in general databases occasionally. When you are having trouble, sometimes it's worth doing single keyword searches to see if one particular keyword is limiting your search too much. At least you get a sense of the extent of the universe in which your more complex searches are operating.)

However, I don't think that is the real message of her search. Google Books also searches the full text of the books (both in and out of copyright). No library catalog can do that. And, as librarians know all too well, there is no way that a typical library catalog record can record every topic covered by a book. A library catalog is, in a way, a simulation of a library. It models the library in a way that makes it easier to manipulate, but the information available is degraded or simplified. (If a simulation has all the information contained in the system it is simulating, it is that system, not a model. Simulations work because non-essential information is stripped out. However, sometimes you are wrong in what is non-essential. Library catalogs work fairly well for many needs, but they are not suited for every single need.) Google Books increases the amount of information within the simulation, increases it to an amazing extent.

It is still a simulation of a library. Copyrighted books are not available fully. You lose some physical knowledge of the book. It doesn't contain the range of books in a full research library (though Google would like to, I'm sure.) Google has not replicated the metadata produced by the experts (librarians) who cataloged the books in the first place. However, for what it does contain, it's hard to argue that it's not a better simulation of a library than your average library catalog is. The major loss is that metadata, which Google attempts to replace with tables of contents, indexes, and a "Key words and phrases" section.

For those unfamiliar with library metadata, I'm mostly referring to subject headings. Subject headings, and other controlled vocabulary systems, allow the assignment of one or more subject terms to a book, article, etc., with the specific terms being consistent over the entirety of the system, and not dependent on whether or not the author used that term. It's related to the way libraries shelve books by subject, so that all the gardening books are together, or all the versions and criticisms of Hamlet end up on the same shelf.

Google's "Key words and phrases" imitates this, but is strictly dependent on the words used in the actual book. I'm assuming that this is an automated process, so this probably related to the frequency of use, and the placement of the words. I would guess that a word used over and over again will score high for inclusion on this list, as will words used in the title, as chapter headings, etc. It should lead to some interesting choices: a book of General Sherman's letters includes "affectionately yours" as a key phrase. It's an interesting fact of letter conventions at the time, but not likely to be a good search phrase. (In case you are curious, the phrase "affectionately yours" turns up 1730 books in Google Book Search, mostly, though not entirely, books of letters. OK, I can see a use for this search, but how often to you need to know the relative frequency of different salutations in different eras? Getting back to the subject, we do loose the specificity of the LC subject heading "Correspondence"--used with a name to specify the letters of this person.)

I hope that Google will see the advantage of not tossing out decades of metadata that would only increase the usefulness of their system. Just add subject headings to the keywords already in use. It does lead to an interesting question of who owns library catalog records. Could Google buy them from someone? And from whom? LC? OCLC? Individual libraries as the books are scanned? Are they copyrighted, or is an individual record similar to an entry in a phone book?

To jump back to Jo for a final moment, she also points out one other service that Google Books performs: multiple access. She found a book that was invaluable to her research. She had kept it for months, paying overdue fines and all, so that she could ensure needed access to a book that she had had such a hard time getting a hold of. Here comes Google Books with instance access, as long as she needs it, and in no competition with any other researcher. (Previously, I had mentioned a tip for using Google Books for copyrighted books before putting in interlibrary loan requests.)

I'm not sure where Google Books is going, or even where academic research is going, but I do conclude that Google Books should be one of several avenues of library research that good scholars should perform.