New OVID interface

From Ilo:

You may have noticed if you have accessed MEDLINE(Ovid) or CINAHL(Ovid) or EBM(Ovid) databases over the last few days, that the interface has changed. Well, they haven’t just moved around the furniture – there are some excellent new features such as natural language searching, and usability added to the OvidSP interface that make your searching easier, and more intuitive. If you liked the control you had over your results in the old interface, then that same usability is still there as well under the tab Advanced Ovid Search.

To access some excellent demonstration tutorials on the new interface, please go to:

http://www.stjohns.com/libraries/ovidsp.aspx#annotate

and scroll down to: Demos and Training Tutorials, in particular, I like the ones produced at Yale University. They are very short and informative:

OvidSP Tutorial Series from Lei Wang of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University of Medicine

Web of Science problems (and a solution)

Many of you will have discovered that the existing link to Web of Science is not working. The database is available, but via a circuitous route. Until we get the link fixed, you can get to it this way:

1. Go to Biological Abstracts.
2. Click on the ‘Select a database’ tab.
3. Click on the Web of Science link

The vendor has been notified, so the regular link should be is fixed now in the next day or so.

UPDATE: the WoS link in the eresources database now works; however, it (and the link for Biological Abstracts and Journal Citation Reports) searches all three databases (i.e., BA, WoS and JCR). In each case, if you want to search only one of the databases, you have to go to the ‘Select a database’ tab and click on the link for the desired database. We are asking ISI if we can have direct links to each database; stay tuned.

Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics

This resource is currently asking for a username/password for access to full-text articles. I’ve alerted the authorities; they’re looking into it.

UPDATE (2008.02.07): Full access has been restored.

Library web pages inaccessible

There seems to be a problem with the CMS or associated software/hardware; a lot of web pages are either completely inaccessible or intermittently so. Library Computing has been advised of the situation, and are looking into it.

PROBLEM SOLVED!