Students with off-campus database problems

If a students contacts you that he/she cannot log in to the databases from off-campus, please provide the following response:

I can give you a temporary password to use today. It will allow you to access the databases until 2am. However, you should make sure that your G# and password are working to log in to Lion's Den. If you can log in to Lion's Den but not the library databases, you should contact the MIS helpdesk, helpdesk@raritanval.edu or 908-526-1200 ext. 4357 and let them know about the problem. Unfortunately the library has no control over password issues.

If you are unable to log in to Lion's Den, you will probably need to go to the MIS helpdesk in person with your college ID card to have your password reset.

For today, you can use the temporary log in below:
Username: ezproxyguest
Password: password from the daily email in reference inbox

Make sure you are giving students the password from the EZPROXYGUEST email, not the libguest or libclass email.

Enhancements to Ebsco Interface

Ebsco will be releasing interface enhancements in the next few weeks. The most significant changes, in my opinion, are to the results page display, and they look like good changes.

The limiters on the results page will be consolidated to the left side of the screen, instead of having "Academic Journals" on one side and "Scholarly Journals" on the other, the way it is now (gee, that makes sense!). They've also pulled the Subject terms back out. Recently they've been hidden away in a drop down menu, but there will be a list of subjects visible and the option to check off multiple subjects, instead of just clicking one.

You can get a glimpse of the new results screen here.

Computer Skills Placement Assessment Resources

A student was looking for a study guide for the Computer Skills Placement Assessment. While I haven't found a simple study guide or cheat sheet yet, there is some information on the test's vendor website that might be helpful to students looking to know what topics are covered by the test. In particular:

http://www.csplacement.com/downloads/Word_Processing.pdf - Objectives for Word Processing

http://www.csplacement.com/downloads/Spreadsheets.pdf - Excel Spreadsheet Objectives

http://www.csplacement.com/downloads/Databases.pdf - Objectives for Databases

http://www.csplacement.com/downloads/Presentations.pdf - Presentations objectives

Our testing center is still using Microsoft Office 2003 for this test, as far as know.

New Resource for Nursing Students?

A response to a LIBREF-L question about the best full-text nursing databases caught my eye today. They provided the URL for the National Guideline Clearinghouse™ (NGC), “a public resource for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines” -- http://www.guideline.gov/.

While playing around in there, I discovered that there is quite a bit of quality nursing information about the diagnosis, prevention and clinical management of both mental and physical diseases/ conditions. So I am now armed and ready for the next round of nursing students looking for the brain oxygen monitoring thresholds for severe traumatic brain injury, (say that 3x fast!) You could be, too -- check it out. Nan

Screenjelly

Screenjelly is screencasting software that does not require any download. You simply go to the website (http://www.screenjelly.com), click the Record button, and you will have 3 minutes to record the action on your screen with voice. This could be good for very short, informal demonstrations because the recording will include you having to switch windows away from and back to the Screenjelly website. But a library is giving a poster session at ALA on how they use it to quickly and visually answer chat and email reference questions, which sounds like a great idea. Instead of describing to students the steps for ILL, for example, you could quickly record the steps on your screen and send the video. Check out the site and watch the Demo.