First Aid Kits

The Dyson Wellness Center staff have kindly re-filled our first aid kits (which are at both the ISD and the Periodicals Desk). If you become aware of any patrons who need first aid supplies, please be sure to check what is available in these kits! If you use up any of the supplies, please be sure to let Jan know so that she can re-stock items as needed.

George S. Huntington

I received this email from Prof. Patricia King: In a writing conference with Meagan Smith, one of my ENG 115 students, I suggested she try to find biographical information on George S. Huntington (who discovered Huntington's disease) in an academic source rather than on the web.

Do we have any encyclopedias--medical or otherwise--that might contain this info? Or would you have any further suggestions as to where she might look for this material?

The biography is in the database (Find Articles) American National Biography, but it does NOT use his middle initial.

Rosemary

Duplex Printing

Ahh, yes. Another printing topic for the ISD blog! It appears that duplex printing is not an option in the Fishbowl right now. I suspect that when they re-ghosted those computers to fix the Spellcheck problems, they may have created a new issue. If you have someone trying to print two-sided material in the Fishbowl, I would suggest having them try to print to the Reference printer. That seemed to have worked for this morning's student.

Print Credits

It's that time of the term... many students are running out of print credits. If you have any students who appear to be having trouble printing, be sure to have them check their print credits (using the $ in the bottom right hand of the screen). If they are out of credits, they simply need to login to Merlin to purchase more. There is a pretty obvious link on the main Merlin page from which they can purchase credits. If they are wondering how they pay, please let them know that the cost is added to their student account.

Week 7 - myEBSCO alerts

Since I've been asked to give a presentation in December on student assistants in the academic library (for the Metropolitan Library System), I've been watching the literature even more closely than I usually do. I didn't expect Academic Search Premier to have much on this topic, but actually found some interesting articles. So, I've now set up my search to target any new materials that become available prior to December. I've set up the RSS feed directly into Google Reader, since I'm now in the habit of checking new postings each day.

I'm not sure how useful most undergrad students would find this feature for their everyday class work. I think it is most applicable for those who are doing longer term research. So, perhaps those doing College Scholars research, working on Richter projects, Masters degree research, etc. would find this most useful. And, of course, I think our faculty would certainly find this helpful in monitoring their particular areas of interest and study, although they are probably using similar features in more specialized sources.

Spellcheck Issues Resolved

ITS has been "re-ghosting" many of the computers in our labs, and spellcheck should once again be available to students from all computers. If you continue to hear of problems, please do let Heidi or me know so that we can make ITS aware of any ongoing problems.

And... one more addition to the list of staff willing to help with Microsoft Word questions. Please add Kim to your list.

21Things - Week 6

I've worked with students who have had their own accounts in EBSCO - mainly for saving articles they have found - but I've not had my own account. I do now! In addition to comments that others have made, I like the fact that you can "turn off" the "Image Quick View" feature. For most of the searches I do, seeing little thumbnails of the first few images in the article is just not that helpful. I find I just ignore them, so it's nice to be able to turn them off so that they don't "clutter" the results screen.

I hadn't looked at the visual image search in EBSCO since they came out with the new interface this past summer. It is quite different than it used to be. I think the older version was actually more "visual" than this new interface. In the old version, I think it was much more obvious where content of articles "overlapped." I'm not really sure this new version would really satisfy a true "visual learner" all that much.

Questions RE: Office 2007 applications

It seems as if those working at the ISD have been receiving an increasing number of requests from students for help with Office 2007 applications (especially Word and Excel). As always, you should ask what the question is and see if you are able to help the patron. (Some of these questions are even simple enough for me to answer!) If you are not able to answer the question, then I would offer the following staff who have indicated a willingness to help:

Microsoft Word:
Jan
Heidi
(several others on staff can probably help, as well, if neither of them is available)

Microsoft Excel:
Jennie
Emily
John
(if none of these staff are available, check with Jan or Heidi to see if they might be able to help)

I'm not aware that we've had any Microsoft Access questions, but if those arise, I'd suggest trying the Microsoft Excel list of staff first.

As always, if no one is available or able to answer the question, then the student will need to be referred to ITS. However, we would like to avoid "referrals" whenever possible.

If anyone else would like to be added to either of these lists, please let me know!

Spellcheck Issues in Word

I know that we've all had many questions from students who couldn't get Spellcheck to work properly in Word. We have recently learned from ITS staff that Spellcheck is only working in the Fishbowl lab and in the Class of '97 lab. ITS is aware that it is not working in other lab locations, but we're not sure when they will be dealing with this issue. So, for now, don't even attempt to troubleshoot Spellcheck problems in any other location. Simply direct the student to one of those two labs if they need to use Spellcheck.

Web form woes

We discovered yesterday that we were not receiving the appropriate emails from the online forms for placing items on reserve. We went on to discover that the forms for interlibrary loan and QuickRef were also not working. Since Emily's off visiting that cute new nephew, we were dependent on ITS to help us get this back up and running. Thankfully, Matt Zannon was able to fix everything this morning.

However, we don't know how many requests we lost in the meantime. If you have patrons who claim to have made a request to place an item on reserve or to order interlibrary loan materials, please apologize and explain that we've had some technical difficulties. If they need to check to see if their request was received, please connect them with either Heidi or June or me.

Welcome to the new Information Services Desk blog. Once I'm more comfortable with this whole blogging routine, it's my intention to allow others of you to post to this site as well so that we can keep each other informed about all things happening at the ISD.

For example, this afternoon we've had lots of reports of students having trouble with their passwords. For some, the problem has prevented them from logging into the network. For others, the problem has surfaced when they try to get into their email. In many cases, it tells them that their password has expired and that they need to change it, but then it doesn't allow them to do so. At this point all we can do is direct them to ITS. If we learn more about the situation and what they can do to remedy it, we will certainly let you know!