EBSCO "Check for Full Text" Error

Update:

Roughly 3 hours after I posted this, Electronic Resources sent out an email saying that this problem has been fixed. Yay!

It also means that this post is now outdated. yay.😑 

Uh...consider it an example of what how error posts will look like!

Hey Folks,

 At time of writing we are dealing with an error that is affecting users who are accessing EBSCO databases off-campus. The error occurs when a user finds an article that is catalogued in the database but does not have its full text stored with EBSCO. What is supposed to happen is that the user clicks on a button that reads "search for full text" which sends them to a Journals A-Z search for the article on the UNCG library website.

Figure 1: An image of an article entry in an EBSCO database with "check for full text" circled in red. 

 

Figure 2: An image of the Journals A-Z search for the article in figure 1. 

However, what happens for users who are off-campus is that search criteria from EBSCO fails to populate in the Journals A-Z search.

This is what you should see when you click "edit search" from the page depicted in Figure 2.

Figure 3: The search criteria used to get the results from figure 2. The ISSN, Article Title, Author(s), Published, and Volume fields have all been populated with the necessary information.

 And this is what someone who has been affected by this error will see.

Figure 4: An image of a Journal A-Z search displaying the message "we were unable to find direct full text links for this item." 

 

Figure 5: An image of the search criteria used for figure 4. Notably, only the Author(s) field is populated.

 

 At time of writing ERIT is looking into this error and will provide updates as the occur.

 

 Work Arounds

 These are two of the ways you can get the article to the patron if they are encountering this error.

1. Ask for the patron's UNCG email, download the PDF for the article, and send the article to the patron from your UNCG email address.
2. Ask the patron for the title of the article, locate it on your computer, confirm that we have full access to the article, and then send the patron a proxied hyperlink to the page that hosts the article. The proxy link can be found in the Technology tab of the reference manual.

The patron should still have access to the article, it is just that EBSCO is acting like a roadblock in their search process.

After the patron has gotten their article, please do assure them that the library is aware of the error and is working on fixing it. 

I hope this helps, and if you start noticing a pattern of patrons having similar errors please send details to LIBIGA@uncg.edu.

Nursing 783 Health Policy & Ethics - Don't be as helpful as you'd prefer to be

 Hi all,

Today I had a consultation with a PhD student in Nursing 783 Health Policy & Ethics.  

She gave information about the research topic before the meeting - 

Articles to support December 2023 Governor Cooper approved Medicaid Expansion known as NC Health Works. Need help and direction in finding articles to support the background of the policy, major stakeholder, and 2026 now effectiveness of this policy. 

When our meeting opened, she responded to the reference interview question "Are you allowed to use sources other than journal articles?"  

I like to ask this question b/c it pulls students out of the "only recent journal articles" trap.  It prompts them to open their assignment instructions, which we'll need during our meeting.  

We talked about resources that could be useful for an assignment like this  - 

1. The NC General Assembly website has a search box that can be set to previous legislative sessions to find bills and laws
2. Searching the open web for news stories and other non-journal article sources can be helpful
3. The the library guide to Law sources links the HeinOnline database- that's a collection of legal materials including law journals, legal blogs, etc.

The student visited these links and did some searching. I suggested terms and so did she.  

She asked me about citing laws and I gave general advice - I like apastyle.org for most APA references, but I haven't seen bills and laws described there.

The Publication Manual of the APA, which we now have as an ebook in the catalog for 6 people at a time, covers citing bills and laws.  Put information from your source into the order/style suggested for that kind of source (a state bill or law).  I didn't create the citation for her!  In fact, I also tell students that I can't review references for them (it's a capacity thing).

I thought this was a pretty solid consult and I reached out to the instructor to let her know that I could create a library guide with links such as the ones above.

Wups, nope!

The instructor was pleased with the content, but also said "that student should be doing this on their own. Part of the course is learning to access policy documents.  They won’t have a Lea when they graduate!"

Makes sense. I want to let students know about these sources, but I went a little over the top. 

I'm writing this long post so that 

1. You know how I'd want to go about finding this kind of information. I absolutely solicited advice from coworkers :)  FYI, there are 11 more students in the NUR 783 course-please feel free to refer them to me, the liaison librarian for nursing.

2. And so you have a few takeaways for desk and chat service (still very Sage on the Stage, me!)

- what I described above is a full research consultation meeting, more than a chat or walk up

- students sometimes ask for a lot of help and instructors might be less than pleased if we do too much for graduate students

- for the health sciences, please don't feel like you have to set up citations for students or review reference lists (Sam also works with health sciences, I don't want to speak for her areas)

- if it's a student in nursing, nutrition, communication sciences & disorders, or genetic counseling, you can refer them to me - Lea Leininger, laleinin@uncg.edu 

-not sure whom to refer to?  check the research guide for that subject to see who the liaison librarian is; I'm happy to help out with other subjects as I'm able

Whew, done for now!

Thank you :)

Lea Leininger, Health Sciences Librarian

Can Students Print From Their Phone Using Pharos?

This question is so common that I'm not going to waste your time with a preamble.

 Short Answer: Yes, but it's Pharos so the method to do so is obnoxious.

 The Method

Pharos does not have a functional mobile website, nor does it have an phone application that students can use. (It does have an app you can download, but as far as I've seen our campus is not set up for it, and even if it was the app is barely functional.)

What you'll need to do is show students how to request the desktop website from their phone's web browser.

Here are support pages for how to do this in both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox's mobile applications.

Google Chrome

Mozilla Firefox

Safari

Unfortunately, the smartphone that the majority of people have is an iPhone. The process for requesting the desktop site on Safari depends on which version of iOS the phone is running. Naturally, Apple has no desire to support its older machines and software, and thus there are no official help pages for this (that I could find at time of writing.)

The best I can give you is a series of screenshots that I've "borrowed" from Prince William Count School's IT knowledge base. The page was created 6 months prior to this article. The process for the most recent iOS may have changed if you are reading this far into the future.

Figure 1: An iPhone screenshot running Safari. The options button is located near the bottom, left-hand side of the screen, just above the back arrow and next to the address bar.

Figure 2: An iPhone screenshot running Safari with the options menu open. The button to see more options is located in the bottom right-hand corner.

Figure 3: An iPhone screenshot with Safari's Page Menu open. The recommended option is under "website settings for example.com."

I highly recommend that in all cases you use the "Request Desktop Website" toggle instead of the first "Request Desktop Website" that appears first on the page menu. This ensures that the student's device will request the desktop website every time they navigate to the Pharos address.

 Important Final Step

In many, many cases the student's phone will not display the correct website after you have selected "Request Desktop Website," or even if you refresh the page. To fix this you must back out of the Pharos page, and then re-enter it.

Once you are able to pull up the Pharos desktop website, the student should be able to upload documents to it as usual.

If All Else Fails

This method has worked consistently for me, but in the event that something goes wrong direct the student to use one of the guest computers to print out their documents instead. 

The "Searches Cannot Be Longer Than 40 words" Error.

 Hey Folks,

There is an error with the catalogue that has been showing up frequently at time of writing. This error prevents people from seeing search results when they use the catalogue search on the UNCG library homepage, and so far has manifested in two ways.

Figure 1: An image of UNCG's catalogue mistakenly displaying an error stating searches cannot be longer than 40 words even though the user has only searched for "french horns."

Figure 2: An image of UNCG's catalogue displaying an authentication request.

 

The Cause 

In all of the cases we've seen so far, the cause has been an issue with the Zotero browser extension. This post assumes basic familiarity with Zotero, however for more information please see our Zotero libguide and Zotero ULTRA tutorial.

The Fix

1. Locate the Zotero extension icon in the browser. This may be pinned to the left of your browser's address bar, or may need you to find it under the extensions icon typically represented by a puzzle piece.

Figure 3: An image of a browser with the correct buttons circled in red.

 

2. Navigate to the options page for the extension. In Firefox (pictured above) this will be labeled "preferences," in Chrome it will be "options," and in Edge it will be "extension options." In all cases, you should find the page labeled Zotero Connector Preferences.

3. Navigate to the tab labeled "proxies."

Figure 4: An image of the Zotero connector preferences page with the "proxies" tab circled in red. 

4. Locate and select the correct NC Live proxy under the "Configured Proxies" heading. The one you want is: https://login.proxy180.nclive.org/login?qurl=%u.

 

Figure 5: An image of the Zotero Connector Preferences page with the correct configured proxy circled in red.

5. Navigate to the box labeled "hostnames." From there you will find and delete "uncg.on.worldcat.org." If there are other configured proxies besides 180.nclive then you may want to see if that hostname appears under any of them and delete those entries as well.

Figure 6: An image of the Zotero connector preferences page with the correct hostname circled and labeled for deletion. 

6. Try a search in the library catalogue to make sure the error is resolved.

 A Simpler Fix

The above fix assumes that you, or the patron you are helping, wishes to continue using Zotero's proxy redirection feature. If that is not the case you can direct them to un-tick the "enable proxy redirection" box under proxy settings.

Why This Error Occurs

My best guess is that because we no longer have our own proxy server, and instead use NC Live's server, our catalogue gets confused and believes that a non-UNCG affiliated patron is attempting to access our catalogue through NC Live. This explains one of the permutations of the error. I have no idea why this causes our catalogue to believe the patron has entered a 40+ word search.

The Teaching Resource Center

 Hey folks,

At some point in your time here at the Jackson Library a patron is going to ask about a specific book and you are going to run into this:

This post is going to give you a rundown on the Teaching Resource Center and hopefully save you a headache.

What is the Teaching Resource Center (TRC), where is it, and why isn't there a hyperlink to easily reserve titles?

The TRC is essentially a model K-12 school library that exists primarily to support students in the School of Education with resources for the various class projects they need to complete. It is located in room 310 of the School of Education Building, and it contains the vast majority of our YA and children's books.

Though we can find books through the online catalogue, the TRC operates its own system to reserve books. The form for this can be found here. Books can be checked out by students, staff, faculty, and K-12 educators in the Piedmont Triad. Community borrowers cannot request materials from the TRC.

K-12 educators must use a valid ID to sign up for a library account at the Jackson Library before they can checkout materials in the TRC.

Other TRC Services:

These services are available to all UNCG students, staff, and faculty. Payments may be made via Spartan Cash.

Lamination

Letter Size (9X12) – $.50 per sheet

Legal Size (9X14.5) – $.75 per sheet

Menu Size (12X18) – $1.00 per sheet

Roll Laminator (for oversized items such as posters up to 24 inches wide) – $1.00 per foot

Poster Printing 

Full color posters 24 in X 36 in. – $10.00-$15.00 each

Foam board mounting – additional $15.00

Original Poster (save as a  pdf) can be submitted for printing via the request form link below. Please allow 48 hours for printing. The TRC cannot guarantee the quality of any poster printed using low resolution images, alternate file formats, or non-standard poster sizes. The TRC cannot print copyrighted materials. See TRC staff for assistance.

Book Binding

Listed as $1 each, but no other specifics are given.

Please note that the TRC offers additional services that are exclusively for the students, staff, and faculty of the School of Education. You can find out more about those services on their webpage here.