Wednesday, August 31, 2011

ProQuest, Annual Report, etc

a)
ProQuest has a new interface, and LOUIS in the process of changing it over. As soon as the new links are confirmed, I'll add it to the site.

The new interface is already set up to appear in our catalog and EBSCO A to Z.

b)
A new Annual Report of the library is out, and I've added that to the site (library, reference, and gov docs. It's in the footer of all of those). Like others before it, it is a scan and the text can't be read by screen readers or searched. I'd like to try and fix that.

To limit confusion about what year it is on various web pages, I've changed the foot to only say "Annual Report" without a year, and made a copy named "ULAR-current.pdf" which will always be the most current version of the file if it's updated by me later. That way, only changing that one file changes them all.
I made a post about the new report to the library blog, but didn't put it on the home page as there are other pertinent things already taking up room there.

EDIT: I also asked someone at the Computing Center to update it on the Ask-a-librarian form, since I don't control that, and it was updated promptly:
https://webservices.ulm.edu/wsforms/library_ask.php

c)
I found a strange error in an EBSCO database, Nursing Reference Center, that only appears under certain circumstances. It's not happening on the link we have been using, but there's different version of this link, which is supposed to be the right one, that doesn't work right off-campus. Here's what I said about it in an email with CH:
While communicating with EBSCO support on a separate issue, the representative gave me a link to a page showing what correct direct database links. However, one of them doesn't work because of a problem with the LOUIS branding image.

If I enter the Nursing Reference Center off-campus through this URL:
http://atoz.ebsco.com/link.asp?id=1412&rid=1519770
It looks like this:
http://www.ulm.edu/reference/louis-vs-nrc-normal.jpg

But if I enter the Nursing Reference Center off-campus through this URL:

http://ezproxy.louislibraries.org:2048/login?url=http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,url,uid&profile=nrc
It looks like this:
http://www.ulm.edu/reference/louis-vs-nrc.jpg


d)
We may soon starting the process to integrate the ULM and LOUIS EZ Proxies. I think that we might want to talk about customizing the log in page again as soon as I can figure out how the page is actually generated, and what is possible.

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