September 28, 2005
Mac Users: Problem Accessing Subscription Databases from Off-Campus Via the Library Proxy
There appears to be a problem using the Safari Web browser or Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) browser on a Mac to access subscription journal databases from off-campus via the Library's proxy server (libproxy.uwinnipeg.ca). Mac users may see something like "too many redirects orrcurred." Mac users should download Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org/ and use it for now until the problem can be resolved as there appears to be no problems with the Firefox browser.
September 26, 2005
Network Upgrade and Planned Power Outage
Starting Wednesday evening (September 28th), TSC will be performing service upgrades starting at 10 p.m. This upgrade will cause a campus wide network outage including access to the Internet for the duration of the upgrade process, anticipated to be from 10:00 p.m. to midnight (assuming all goes well).
Early Thursday morning (September 29th) Physical Plant will be cutting power to Centennial Hall and several other halls to replace a defective switch in the main electrical hall in Centennial Hall. The power outage is expected to go from midnight until 4 a.m.
These outages will effect all Library servers and services offered by these servers including the Library Catalogue (mercury/innopac) and Main Library Website and MyCybrary (cybrary), Reserves/EReserves (mercury/innopac), and Access to Subscription Journals/Databases via the Library Proxy (libproxy), InterLibrary Loans (openill), to name a few. Students and Faculty should plan workflow and access accordingly for the outage and allow for systems being unavailable for longer than planned/specified.
September 20, 2005
RedLightGreen
Search for books in many libraries:
RedLightGreen is a free resource to find important books for research, check availability in the library, and create citations.
- To check University of Winnipeg holdings
- Click on Sign In after your search
- Enter your email address
- And click on "Go" (if you have signed in before enter your password)
RedLightGreen helps you locate the most important books and other research materials for your term papers and find out whether what you need is available at your favorite library. Sign in and you can format and send citations or a bibliography any way you want: MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian. Just click - and it's done.
RedLightGreen searches millions of records from the RLG Union Catalog to put the most widely held, most relevant items near the top of any search results list, which helps students zero in on the most credible books and authors quickly. If a particular book is widely available, it can be considered an important source of information in its subject area: selection by dozens of academic librarians is an implicit endorsement of its worth.
Simple searching… sophisticated results
Student testing has informed the development of RedLightGreen from the start. The goal is a Web site that excels at addressing undergraduates’ research needs, while improving the quality of their research.
A familiar search interface is backed by data mining tools (Recommind Inc.’s MindServer software) that enable students using their own words and phrases to get quality results from the authenticated library catalog data at the heart of RedLightGreen.
A gateway to the library
Once students have found the books they want, just a few clicks will take them right to the entry for that book in the library catalog to check on its availability, allowing them to move quickly from initial discovery (finding relevant books) to in-depth research (getting and reading those books).
Citations in standard formats
With a few more clicks, RedLightGreen creates a properly formatted bibliography according to MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian rules. The system also provides detailed bibliographic information on any book, including data about editions, contributors, subject classifications, and more.
About RedLightGreen
RedLightGreen is a tool produced by RLG and is available to any Web user.
September 16, 2005
New Students
Welcome to the Library. To get started you should:
- Claim your computer account and password
- Create your Library PIN (enter your barcode and a PIN number of your choice)
- Use your barcode number (printed on the front on your student ID card) to access scholarly resources from off-campus
For details check out wiki.uwinnipeg.ca.
September 15, 2005
New database
The Library has recently acquired a subscription to SocIndex from EBSCOhost, which replaces our online subscription to Sociological Abstracts. Described by the vendor as "the world's most comprehensive and highest quality sociology research database," this product provides subject-indexing for over 1,300,000 items, and abstracts for 620 "core" journals dating back to 1895.
September 13, 2005
New online journal collection
AnthroSource is a searchable electronic archive of all journals published by the American Anthropological Association, including the American Anthropologist, complete through 2003. Citations within the articles are linked through CrossRef to other publications, both within and outside of the collection.
In addition, the following 11 journals are available through to their current issues:
- American Anthropologist
- American Ethnologist
- Anthropology and Education Quarterly
- Anthropology and Humanism
- Archaeological Publications of the American Anthropological Association
- Cultural Anthropology
- Ethos
- Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
- Medical Anthropology Quarterly
- NAPA Bulletin
- PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology
- Review.
September 9, 2005
"Little Hope" for Archives Lost in New Orleans
The calamity in the Gulf states has taken thousands of lives and caused incalculable damage to property and infrastructure. But, as it is now becoming apparent, it has also taken an emormous toll on the written memory of the region. Archives and depositories of written documents have been destroyed in the flood, and, as the Los Angeles Times reports, "paper is everywhere - floating in the water, trapped in tree branches, ground into curbside mud."
"Millions of pages are soaked in courthouse basements, businesses and homes. Among the items are records of families, land ownership and commercial transactions, along with all the paper that charts the minutiae of everyday life.
"In the basement of the Civil District Courthouse on Poydras Street, three blocks from the Superdome, water has lapped over 20% of the 60,000 leather-bound books of the New Orleans Notarial Archives. The books contain the records of all property transfers in the city that have occurred in the modern era.
"Farther down Poydras Street, at the Amoco Building, the Notarial Archives maintains an equally large collection of older documents, some dating to the 1700s. Many are handwritten, such as a power of attorney signed by the pirate Jean Lafitte giving his brother Pierre authority to demand reparations from Washington for damages suffered in the War of 1812.
"'It's the single most perfect collection of these documents in North America,' said historian Thomas Ingersoll of Ohio State University, who used them to prepare his thesis on 19th century slavery. The city is preparing for a massive exodus of paper, trucking out valuable documents so they can be freeze-dried and cleaned by hand.
But for most of the paper blown through broken windows in the hurricane or flushed out into the city by the flood, there is little hope."
September 6, 2005
New Dedicated Library Proxy System
The Library proxy system provides access to subscription database materials for off-campus users (and to the Winnipeg Free Press 8-day archive for on- and off-campus users). Previously the proxy system was available via Innopac (the Library catalogue server via http://innopac.uwinnipeg.ca:2048/login). During the summer, we set up a dedicated server called Libproxy (libproxy.uwinnipeg.ca) to handle all database proxy requests. We've also configured the proxy system to be more firewall-friendly to off-campus users who may have firewall restrictions on their home or workplace network (so no more 2000-series ports will be required for connecting to the proxy).
Proxy links starting with innopac.uwinnipeg.ca are no longer valid. If you should have any bookmarked pages with innopac.uwinnipeg.ca, please delete them immediately and use the links provided at http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/find/db/alphaDisplay.cfm. If you should be directed to innopac.uwinnipeg.ca rather than libproxy.uwinnipeg.ca or if you should have any technical problems with the Library's proxy and accessing subscription database resources, please contact libsystems@uwinnipeg.ca.
Swedes Launch a "Living Library"
Much in the same vein as Morgan Spurlock's television program, "30 Days" (which has featured episodes in which people are matched with members of some group towards whom they hold deep-seated prejudices), the Swedish "Living Library Project" will allow people to "check out" complete strangers in order to engage them in conversation.
"The 'items' on loan will include an imam, a journalist, a Dane, a homosexual, a Muslim woman and a member of the Romany, or Gypsy, community. The 'Borrow a Bias' project will give borrowers 45 minutes to confront the prejudice of their choice in the library’s outdoor cafe. It is not clear whether the library will impose late-fees if borrowers are late returning their loans."
September 1, 2005
On the Path of Hurricane Katrina Part 2
MSNBC and REUTERS both note the importance of the web for the victims of Huricane Katrina, as "a bulletin board for the missing, a source of moving personal narratives and a sounding board for frustrations over the pace of relief."
The Internet has been the only source of publication for The Times Picayune, the major New Orleans Newspaper, which has only published online for the last two days. There are also message boards, such as HurricaneKatrinaSurvivors for survivors and people looking for family members.
And today has been declared "Blogging for Katrina Day" by bloggers who have started therr own relief effort.