Kari Petryszyn – St. Thomas Libraries Blog - Page 2

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Kari Petryszyn

Circulation, Libraries

Time Limits Shortened for E-book “Checkouts”

ebookUST Libraries has thousands of books online that you can read from anywhere! While you can read each of them right from your internet browser, there may be times when you want to download one or more to your phone, computer, or other mobile device.

When you download an online book, this is considered a “checkout,” just like when you check out a print book from your favorite library desk. Just like a print book, it will have a due date, but unlike your print book, it will return itself!

Starting this semester,  many of our online books will “return themselves” after one day, though some will stay on your device for up to seven days. The reason is that many of our online books restrict the number of people who can use it simultaneously, and we want to make our high demand, online books as easily accessible to everyone as possible. The great news is, if you want to use the book again after it’s returned itself, you can just check it out again if no one was waiting for it.

Find out more about e-books at UST here, or Ask a Librarian!

February 1, 2016 by
News & Events

2016 Presidential Primary Debates This Week

preselectionThe Republicans’ presidential candidates face off again Thursday, Jan. 14 in a two part public debate,
while the Democratic candidates are set to debate on Sunday, Jan. 17. Find out more about the candidates and where you can watch using our guide to the 2016 General Election.

Here you will find links to all sorts of useful information including:

  • Video and transcripts for all past public debates
  • Fact checking sites that show who is being honest and who is bending the truth
  • A news aggregator showing the top political headlines from sources all around the web

Visit it today and throughout 2016 to make sure you are in the know this campaign season.

January 14, 2016 by
News & Events

Race for the White House: 2016

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The Republicans presidential candidates face off again tonight in a two part public debate, while the Democratic candidates are set to debate on Saturday. Find out more about the candidates and where you can watch using our guide to the 2016 General Election.

Here you will find links to all sorts of useful information including:

  • Video and transcripts for all past public debates
  • Fact checking sites that show who is being honest and who is bending the truth
  • A news aggregator showing the top political headlines from sources all around the web

Visit it today and throughout 2016 to make sure you are in the know this campaign season.

 

 

November 10, 2015 by
Database Highlights & Trials

Trial – Flipster

Two years ago we introduced BrowZine, a powerful, digital browsing experience for academic journals, and now we are trialing a similar product for popular magazines. Until the end of October, you can browse, flip through, and read the more than 650 magazines available on Flipster, a digital newsstand for anytime access on your computer or mobile device. Magazines in Flipster have true-to-life layout with all the full color pictures and advertisements. Flipster Mags

Flipster allows you to browse the latest issues of high quality digital versions of popular magazines, courtesy of the library. As I said, our current trial includes their entire collection of magazines, but in the event that we subscribe to Flipster, we would have to pick and choose which titles we could offer. It may also be the case that we HAVE to subscribe to certain titles through Flipster, because rumor has it, titles such as Science News may ONLY be available to us in the future through Flipster.

Flipster has many features designed to give readers an easy and fun digital reading experience. You can browse magazines by category as well as perform searches for specific magazines. An online newsstand provides a carousel of the most recent issues, as well as a carousel of all issues allowing for quick access to magazines. The table of contents contains links to quickly go to articles of interest and hotlinks within magazines are hyperlinked, opening in separate tabs when clicked. In addition, there is an option to zoom in and out for better readability.

Please check out this fun resource before our trial ends on October 31. Send any feedback and which magazines you would like to see it host to Meg Manahan <mkmanahan@stthomas.edu>, or leave your comments below.

October 2, 2015 by
Database Highlights & Trials

SCHEDULED SERVICE INTERRUPTION: ProQuest Databases (Including RefWorks) Down for Maintenance Saturday Night

ProQuestLogoOn Saturday, August 8, ProQuest will be upgrading its systems infrastructure to improve performance, security, and overall reliability of its products. The window is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. and will last for eight (8) hours.

During this time access to the ProQuest products listed below will not be available:

Research databases

  • Databases on the ProQuest platform (search.proquest.com)
  • Databases on the ProQuest Congressional platform (congressional.proquest.com)
  • Databases on the Chadwyck-Healey platform
  • ProQuest Digital Microfilm

Reference management

  • RefWorks

Bibliographic and catalog enrichment resources

  • Books in Print®
  • ProQuest Syndetic Solutions™
  • Resources for College Libraries

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause!

August 7, 2015 by
Database Highlights & Trials, News & Events

Summon Search Is Back!

After some temporary problems with the data and linking inside of Summon, everything is back in proper working order!

You researchers out there can now resume using this tool, which is a great place to start most of your research topics. It searches across 91.6% of our journal content at the same time it searches across much of our e-book,  print book, and streaming media content! For our experienced researchers out there, it might be a great way to discover related content that comes from databases that you don’t normally use in your discipline, so check it out today!

June 11, 2015 by
Database Highlights & Trials, News & Events

USING SUMMON SEARCH: Temporary Data Problem Work-Around

UST Researchers,

Summon Search on Library Homepage

Where to find Summon on the Library Homepage

If you’ve already started tackling that Summer Research Project, please be aware of a current issue happening in our Summon Search. Summon is currently incorrectly identifying many journal articles and other kinds of content as books, which then makes the links to the content not work. This is very frustrating, and we apologize for the inconvenience that this is causing. ProQuest, Summon’s parent company, is currently working to identify the cause of the issue, and we will let you know just as soon as they get it fixed.

In the meantime, please consider these alternatives, or look below for possible workarounds while still using Summon.

 

If you choose to continue using Summon during this time, please note the following.

 Summon search results appear normal at first glance.

Summon search results appear normal at first glance.

But note on closer inspection, each entry that says “Book: Full Text Online,” is actually not a book.

Actual books in your Summon search results will show the book’s library location. Actual books in your Summon Search results will show the book's library location.

To find out where you can get access to the content that says it’s a book when it’s not a book, check out the Explorer Pane on the right side of your screen. You can access it by either hovering your cursor over your search result or by clicking the black triangle.

Summon search results appear normal at first glance.

black triangle

In the Explorer Pane, you can either find the source (the database) the content came from, as in the picture above, or you can find the Publication Title (the journal), as in the picture below.

Publication Title Toronto Star

If you have the name of a database, search for your journal article/content inside of the database, once you’ve located it in our list of databases.

If you have the name of a journal, search inside of that journal once you’ve located it in our list of journals.

June 8, 2015 by