IEEE Xplore upgrade Saturday 2 February

The Library has been informed that an upgrade of the IEEE Xplore Digital Library has been rescheduled now for Saturday, 2 February. During this deployment, the system will be unavailable for up to up to eight hours beginning at approximately 9:00 AM ET. IEEE apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Scopus - problem with recently added records

In the past two weeks, as part of an initiative to load pre-1996 articles to enrich Scopus content, a large number of articles from Elsevier journals were loaded erroneously into Scopus with incorrect publication year and incomplete source title information.

As a result of this, an incorrect publishing year of 2007 and 2008 has been assigned to these records and only limited source information is available, namely journal title and page numbers. Because of the incomplete information, SFX (find it @ liverpool) links, and the mechanism that is used to remove duplicate articles hasn't worked properly either. As a consequence, the records are incorrectly appearing in search alerts as well.

A solution to resolve this issue is already in place and Scopus expect the records with the incorrect information to be removed from Scopus by the end of next week.

Scopus apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Finding that Google isn't meeting your research needs?

...well I'm not surprised to be honest! Google is good for many things, we all know that (well, give or take a few things we might not like...) but when it comes to finding academic research you still can't beat a good 'old fashioned' University Library.

And when that good 'old fashioned' University Library provides its users with easy access to most of its collection online, so much the better :-)

So don't miss out - go to the University portal for online students and staff and login with your MWS username and password and access the Online Library from here.

For further tips on getting the most from the Online Library and finding and managing information for your research, take a look at the Information Literacy Resource. This is a self study resource available on Embanet (MBA Area - MBA Information Literacy Resource, MSC Area - MSc Information Literacy Resource and MPH Area - MPH Information Literacy Resource).

Take a look and if there's something you're not sure about or you just want a chat about using the Library for your research, please contact me, Stephanie Allen at Online_Librarian@embanet.com

National E-books Survey

As part of the JISC E-Books Observatory Project, the CIBER research group at University College London have been commissioned to carry out a national survey about e-books. Please complete this survey as a high response rate will make it much more useful. To complete the survey, please see the further information for students or teaching staff. The survey closes at midnight (UK time) on Friday 15 February.

AirPAC: the Library Catalogue goes mobile

The Library Systems Team have produced a tool called AirPAC that will allow users to use mobiles and other handheld devices to search the library catalogue. This will mean that you can now check whether the Library has an e-journal title or e-book using your mobile or other handheld device.

To use AirPAC simply go to: http://library.liv.ac.uk/airpac/ or any device that is connected to the internet. Please be aware that AirPAC doesn't yet have the same functionality as the main library catalogue and at this time it can only be used for searching.

Please post any comments you have about this to the blog or email the Online Librarian who will pass on your comments to the Systems Team.

Times Higher Education freely available online

Times Higher Education (the re-branded magazine that used to be the Times Higher Education Supplement newspaper) is now freely available online. The site includes a free archive back to 28th October 1994. A link to this site now appears in the library catalogue and the searchable SFX journals list.

MWS (Online Library) Password Expiry and New University Portal - Important!

All University users are now required to change their Managed Windows Service (MWS) password (the password used to access the Online Library resources) every three months. This measure is a requirement of the University's Auditors and is designed to increase security.

Between 7th January and 4th February 2008 MWS passwords for University of Liverpool Laureate online students and staff will start expiring. You will receive an email message through your University of Liverpool email account advising you when your password is about to expire (you will be sent two email reminders and then a final reminder).

To change your MWS password please follow these instructions. Do follow the ‘Password rules’ advice carefully as this will help you create a secure, acceptable password.

To make sure that you are reminded about when your password is due to expire again we recommend you do the following:

1. Login to the new University Portal for Online students (using your MWS username and password). The University portal will give you automatic reminders about when your password is due to expire. It will also give you easy access to Online Library and Computing Services news, direct links to the Online Library resources, easy access to your University of Liverpool email account and an email forwarding facility. In future, we will be publicising the portal as the recommended way of accessing the University services.
2. Check your University of Liverpool email regularly. This can be easily accessed through the University Portal. You can also follow this link to Webmail and add your MWS username and password. Messages advising you when your password is due to expire will be sent to this email address.
3. Set up an email forwarding service from your University account to the email address you use most regularly, for example, to your Embanet account. Again this can be done easily through the University Portal.

If anyone has any questions about MWS password expiry please contact the University Computing Services Helpdesk. It is a good idea to set a Secret Question to help verify your identity with the Computing Services Helpdesk in cases such as a forgotten MWS password.

Any Library related enquiries should be sent to Stephanie Allen, Online Librarian

Online Library & Computing Helpdesk service back to normal

The Online Library enquiry service and the University Computing Services Helpdesk service are now back to normal after the Christmas closed period. Please get in touch if you have a question. Contact the Computing Services Helpdesk for Managed Windows Service (MWS) registration enquiries or forgotten usernames/passwords (helpdesk@liverpool.ac.uk; + 44 (0) 151 794 4567). For all other enquiries, contact Stephanie Allen, the Online Librarian (Online_Librarian@embanet.com; + 44 (0) 151 794 4345).