Pharos Printing Allocation and Spartan Cash Balance: Printing Money Not Appearing

 Hey Folks,

 This is another confusing aspect of the Pharos Print system that we get questions about fairly often, and it usually comes in this form.

"Hey, I just added money to my Spartan Cash account but the computer doesn't show it."

The answer, unfortunately, requires some explanation and some defined terms.

 

Figure 1: Image of the Pharos Print Center client with the Pharos Print Allocation circled in red.

First up, this is the Pharos Print Allocation. This number represents the free money that is allocated to everyone's Pharos account at the beginning of each semester. The Pharos Print Allocation can only be used for printing on the Pharos system.

Figure 2: An image of the SpartanCard Online homepage with the Spartan Cash balance circled in red.

 Second, we have the Spartan Cash balance. This represents the amount of money that is deposited in your Spartan Cash account. Spartan Cash can be used for a variety of things, including printing.

Figure 3: An image of the total printing balance that appears on Pharos print release terminals.

 Third and finally, we have what I'm going to call the total printing balance. This number should reflect the total amount of printing funds available to you. This includes both the Spartan Cash balance, as well as the Pharos Print Allocation.

The Problem

 Typically, the patron will realize that they have run out of their Pharos Print Allocation and proceed to make a quick deposit into their Spartan Cash account. They will then go and check the number that they have been conditioned to believe represents their printing money: the Pharos Print Allocation.

 

Now, because the Pharos Print Allocation only shows the free print money they are given at the beginning of the semester, it will remain at $0.00 no matter how much they deposit into their Spartan Cash account.

 

 The Solution

The fastest way to solve this is to have them check their total printing balance on the Pharos print release terminal near the reference desk. This should show that more printing money is available to them. Feel free to explain the difference between the three numbers above if you wish to be as informative as possible, or you just really like seeing patrons' bemused expressions.

 

 The Complication (Because Nothing is Ever Simple With Printing)

You may have noticed all of the qualifying words in the above description. The reason for that is the total printing balance does not always update quickly enough to represent the money added to the Spartan Cash balance. They should still be able to print as long as they see money in their Spartan Cash balance, no matter what number the total print balance is showing them.

 

With any luck, now that I've taken the time to document this oddity, the Pharos system will finally be phased out on the student side and we'll be able to spend time documenting whatever new and interesting errors the PaperCut system will produce.

Permalinks for EBSCO Search Results

 Hey Folks,

 

Some of you may have seen the recent questions we've gotten about permalinks for search results pages in EBSCO. This confusion came about because EBSCO updated their UI last year and did away with the dedicated permalink button, and replaced it with the share arrow.

Figure 1: An image of the old EBSCO database UI with a red arrow pointed to the permalink button and the permalink bar circled. Image shamelessly stolen from this North Eastern University LibGuide.

 

Figure 2: An image of the current EBSCO database UI with the share arrow button circled in red.

Figure 3: An image of the current EBSCO database UI with the "Share" menu opened. A red arrow points to the create link button and the link itself has been circled in red.

Importantly, the share arrow button only exists for articles. In the previous version of the UI there was a permalink button for the search results page itself. Since the update in 2025 EBSCO made it so that the URL in the address bar acts as a permalink.

Unfortunately, this fact is not prominently stated anywhere on the page.

The questions we received recently seem to come from a KIN 644 class whose instructor gave their students a video produced by our liaison librarian Sam Harlow from 2023 before the UI change. Sam has since contacted that instructor to clear up any confusion.

How to Answer This Question if it Comes Up Again

Tell the patron that the URL in their address bar is a permalink. If they would a more robust way to save searches, inform them that they can always use their UNCG email address to create a personal EBSCO account to save multiple searches.

Hope this helps! 

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.