More outages

The Library Catalog system will be down for an upgrade, this Friday, Oct 23, 2009, from 5pm to 8pm. (The library itself is closed for that time, as we usually are Friday evening.) For off campus users this will affect using the library catalog, CONSULS, including e-reserves, and logging into the databases from off campus.

If you have research that you can't put off, I would suggest working in Google Scholar to find likely prospects and using the library preferences and the Journal Locator to see if we ought to have the article you want. You won't be able to get into anything until 8pm, but you can save your citations until then. (This is a good strategy for anytime that you can't get into our databases, whether it's because of a network issue, system down time, or account problems.)

The Journal Locator will be down on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009, from 2am-8am (updated). You will be able to search the databases, but not use the Find Article @ SCSU. I would suggest saving the citations you are interested in (either by email, in database folders for the databases you can set personal accounts for, like EBSCO and ScienceDirect, or in an outside citation manager like EndNote Web) and then checking them once the system is back up.

Speaking of Journal Locator, we have having issues with one component listed, EJS (EBSCO Journal Service). It is currently showing up for more journals and years than we actually own. If you see it come up and you click through and get a No Access message, it's probably that we really don't have that journal/year. The results should be getting better as the next 2 weeks go on, as Periodicals is manually updating the EJS records, all 22,000 of them. Sorry for the confusion and the frustration.

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).

CONSULS outage

Sorry there hasn't been anything more interesting than outages here recently.

Wednesday, Nov 12 at 6:30AM (Eastern), CONSULS will be down for about half an hour for some maintenance work. The catalog, staff functions, and login to the databases will be down. I'm pretty sure if you are already in a database you will be fine, since the needed cookies will be set, but you won't be able to log into the databases during the outage. I'm not sure about switching from one database to another--I suspect that changing within a vendor would be fine, but maybe not between vendors. (I.e. you could switch from Academic Search Premier to ERIC, both on EBSCO, but maybe not to Library Literature, on FirstSearch.)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Network downtime Sunday (9/28)

Nearly everything will be down Sunday (9/28) morning between 6 am and 1pm (Eastern, of course), while IT replaces equipment in our Data Center. Campus web pages, MySCSU, Vista, Banner, email (it'll still be received, you just won't be able to get at it.) They are replacing the circuit breakers that failed a few weeks ago, causing an unexpected complete outage.

Since the library website will also be down, here is a link to the most commonly used databases: Ebsco databases. You should still be able to log in, since the login server is housed at CCSU. If you are going to need another database Sunday morning, go to the databases page, right click (CTRL-click on a Mac) and choose Copy Shortcut/Link location, then paste the link into an email to yourself or something similar. Be sure to use the links on the database page, because the URL's in the address bar once you are in the database usually won't work.

Another work around for this is to use Google Scholar after setting the Library in your preferences. Click the Preferences link just to the right of the search box, and scroll down to the Library section. Search for Southern, and select SCSU. Now you will get Full Text @ Buley links which connect to our journal locator (like the Find Article @ SCSU links in the databases). JSTOR and ScienceDirect articles will come up this way. (I'm pretty sure this will work on Sunday--nothing in this sequence should be housed on campus. If not, just note down the interesting citations and use the Journal Locator to find which databases the journals are in.)

Another planned outage: Friday afternoon for the web server

This time it's the web server, going down from 4:30 - 6:30 pm on Friday, Aug. 15, for upgrades to the software (Apache and PHP). Other than the downtime itself, users probably won't notice a thing.

IT seems to be getting all our systems upgraded this summer: Banner and Vista have had upgrades; now the web server. The planned email migration to Exchange has been delayed, however. No official word on that, but I hear they may do a gradual switch over, maybe by department, rather than a mass, all-at-once change. Watch your campus email for announcements on that. (And if you aren't watching your campus email, why not? You can set your MySCSU mail to forward to the email address of your choice: go into your email and choose the Options tab.)

MySCSU downtime Friday morning

MySCSU will be down from 5 am to 8:30 am tomorrow, Friday, July 18. It's the portal itself that they are working on, so this won't block or bounce email--you just won't be able to get at it. Vista and other web services won't be affected.

Vista & Library login server down

Something has happened to a server at the main system office, so you can't login to either Vista or the Library databases. I've got no other info right now, but all the right people have been notified, so someone is working on the problem. Hang in there and keep trying!

Update, 7/9, 9:30 AM: Everything seems to be back up now. No news on what happened so far. Thank you for your patience.