Wednesday, April 14, 2010

So what happened to the services offered by Xpressit!?

Here's an update on where the mini-copy center services of Xpressit! (formerly in the Bookstore plaza) have gone...

http://printing.ucsc.edu/

They are now offered by Printing Services in Baskin Engineering. From their page:

"We provide fast, cost-effective printing from black and white through four-color printing in all sizes – up to 19" x 25" (and beyond, with our large format printer). We offer free delivery on orders for customers on and off campus! In a hurry, need it now or overnight? Let us know. We can meet your needs!

Products & Services

Offset Printing Quick Copies
Electronic Pre-Press Flyers

Document Scanning

Booklets

Large Format Posters

Signage
Promotional Products Bindery Services
Professor Publishing Services Printer Paper
Copyright Clearance Services Graphic Services
Project & Data Management

Location
Basement of
Baskin Engineering
B66
Phone: 459-2925
Fax: 459-3899
Email: printing_services@ucsc.edu
Hours
Monday through Friday
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Additional info: Fax service
I confirmed that they still provide a public fax service, payable by cash, debit or credit. It's $1.00 per page to receive; $2.00 for the first page to send and $1.00 for each additional page; for international, $3.00 for the first page, and $2.00 for each additional page. LM 4/15/10


Right desk Mac screen tilting problem

The ergonomic arm on the right desk Mac seems to have a missing bolt or screw that allows us to tilt it backward and forward as we need to. A call is in to Jerry to see if he can fix it for us.
It does seem to be working at the moment if you gently tilt it back away from you. But if it starts to tilt forward, it falls all the way and is unusable.

Thanks for your patience while we have it repaired. In the meantime, if you are uncomfortale using it until it's fixed, use the center computer on the back table or the left desk Mac.

Thanks,

Laura

Friday, April 9, 2010

2nd floor construction update

Per Eric's update on the Devcon 2nd Floor G-Line construction, it looks like the Gov Docs will be covered on Monday and probably inaccessible through Tuesday. So during this time, please consult with Lucia, Jan, or me about possible alternate access to government documents.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

2nd floor construction


Devcon is currently de-constructing the wall along G-line in the Reference shared work area, and will begin work in the second floor stacks area next Monday, April 12. It will take at least Monday and Tuesday to complete the work. As on the other floors, plastic will be draped from floor to ceiling by the contractor, and additional plastic sheeting will placed over the stacks by Operations and Preservation.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Eric

Operations

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

ProQuest / CSA databases down for maintenance, April 10, 7:00 p.m. to April 11, 7:00 a.m.

7 April 2010
ProQuest® will be performing infrastructure maintenance on April 10, 2010. A twelve (12) hour maintenance window will be required for this maintenance. The window will take place from Saturday, April 10, 2010, at 7:00 PM (PDT) to Sunday, April 11, 2010 at 7:00 AM (PDT).

The following products will be unavailable during these windows:

ProQuest platform products, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, American Periodicals Series
CSA products
UMI products, including ProQuest Digital Microfilm and online dissertation products
ProQuest® welcomes customer feedback. Please email your comments to platform feedback or visit www.proquest.com/go/suggestions.

Please share this information information with your colleagues.

Jayne Dickson
CDL Information Services
California Digital Library
University of California
510.987.0550
jayne.dickson@ucop.edu

PubMed indexing now available back to 1947

"With the addition of the 1947 citations, the MEDLINE/PubMed subset now contains over 20 million citations produced during 63 years of indexing of the biomedical literature."
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ma10/ma10_oldmedline.html


Thanks to Christy Hightower for the alert.

Gov Docs accessibility



Due to the G-Line construction on the 2nd Floor, the Gov Docs collection will be mostly inaccessible. We’re not quite sure of the timeline for this (at least today and maybe tomorrow?). If you encounter a patron who wants one of these inaccessible government documents, please let me know. We might be able to find a work-around; the desired document might be available online (even if there is no apparent electronic copy) or even on microfiche. So please feel free to call me at 9-5654 or find me in my office (my door will probably be closed due to construction sound) and I will help in any way that I can.

Cheers,

Jess

Monday, April 5, 2010

Students asking for Plagiarism Quiz

Anna Tsing is referring her Anthropology students to a plagiarism quiz. The quiz is hosted by another institution and can be found at http://abacus.bates.edu/cbb/quiz/index.html.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Ref Desk "Not on Desk" lists posted

I have made a posted two lists of who is not on the desk on certain days, to help facilitate trades, coverage, etc. If you do not see a name listed and they are also not on the schedule, that means that are working at S&E that day or are telecommuting.

There are two versions to reflect the double-staff and single-staff schedules we are using this spring.

http://internal.library.ucsc.edu/ref/schedule/index.html

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best, Laura

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Billing questions tip

Jess had a good reminder if you encounter a billing question.

Be sure to ask the patron what the bill is for: Printing or library material

If it's printing, refer them to the central IT support line 459-4357 or help@ucsc.edu

If it's a library material fine, refer them to Access or point them to the online library billing form at http://library.ucsc.edu/services/borrowing/billing

New 2nd floor copiers: screen message

The new Ricoh copiers have been installed by Copier Services on the 2nd floor. They are no longer free and are back to the normal pricing (15¢ per page when paying with cash, 8¢ per page when using a Slug Copy Card).

The screen on the copier now displays a message (which we are trying to have changed to something more intuitive) that says:

"To use the following function(s), set Key Counter. Copier"

This means:
"The copier is ready to be used, put a Slug Copy Card in the tower to make a copy and have access to the control screen"

It also displays a tiny message at the bottom left of the screen that says:

"Cannot connect with DHCP server. (101) Contact the Administrator."

This means: "I don't have a server to connect with (and won't), so ignore this message."

We are trying to have these either removed or fixed, so stay tuned.

The 3rd floor old copier is currently out of order. The 4th floor old copier is working.

No printer at the Ref Desk

As a reminder for those that have been away from the desk and are back for Spring Quarter, there is no longer a printer at the McHenry Ref Desk. Details are below in Lucia's March 11th refall message:

"
The printer at the McH ref desk is being moved to the Ref offices to replace the dead one. This means we will not have a printer at the Ref desk until further notice.
The desk machines still print to this printer, but you will need to 
walk into the office (next to the mailbar) to retrieve anything you
print from the desk.

Let me know if you have questions.

thank you,

Lucia"


Monday, March 29, 2010

Desk stats now online

Just a reminder that we have moved to collecting Reference statistics online. The SurveyMonkey page is bookmarked on the browser toolbar on every machine at the desk.

There are only two required fields, but it would be helpful if you could fill out other fields if you have time between questions.

Many thanks to Frank Gravier for getting this project off the ground and on the computers.

thank you,

Lucia

Monday, March 22, 2010

IT support over Spring Break

Omar let Lucia know that CNS will be providing on-call service only. The students working this week are addressing maintenance issues, but will be checking machines and monitoring paper supplies. We need to call the CNS number, 459-2486, if there are problems.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Desk stats migrating to online form

We are migrating McHenry Ref Desk statistics gathering online, using SurveyMonkey. We will start using this on Monday, March 29th, the first day of Spring quarter. We will no longer be using the paper forms and clipboard. However, we do have them on hand in case the power goes out or there is some other unforeseen problem.

Here's the important things to know:

There are only two *required* fields: Shift Time and Desk Stats Category (Dir, Short, Long). The other fields are optional. It would be helpful if you could fill them out, but you don't need to if it's busy.

Category refresher:
+ Directional: Giving directions. Pointing to a resource or service point or location of materials. Directions to the bathroom, etc.

+ Short: Anything more than directional that requires explanation up to 5 minutes, such as how to read call numbers, how to look up a book, etc.

+ Lengthy: Anything longer than 5 minutes.

The form is bookmarked on the toolbars at every Ref desk machine as "MCH REF DESK STATS." If you want to take a look at it now, use this URL: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mchrefstats.

Keep this URL handy in case you need to enter statistics after your desk shift.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

thank you,

Lucia

Opening PDFs on public computers

If a document opens with the open source PDF viewer (not Adobe), right-click to choose "Open with...Adobe" or save it to the desktop and then drag it to Adobe in the dock. Same for the Ref Desk computers.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Printing update and clarification

From the public computers, there is no longer a second popup window (that tells the patron how much the print job will be). That changed with the new system, but some did not hear about the change. Macs didn't need the notify acknowledgment, but PCs did, to send the print job. It was a feature of the old
printing system, that we did not implement in the new version. So now all the patron needs to do is name the print job and then pick it up from one of the release stations. They will see the cost when they pick up the print job from the release station (Thanks to Frank Dang for this clarification).

Questions from the desk

-local high school student needed to find books and articles about Jack Ruby

-community member doing research for a memoir by a former UCSC student from the 1970's
(including info about minority students groups now and then; the 1975 sit-in re: EOP)

-faculty needed help doing a search in our catalog for handmade books

-community member found a book in Google books, needed to find the source of a quotation used, but could not see the page with the source in Google books (we had it and I emailed the source)

-student currently writing a policy statement on the overspending on and
overpopulated prison in California

-PhD student in Hong Kong needed help with contemporary Latin American cinema research in determining which libraries in California (Los Angeles in particular) had a particular film

-graduate student at UCB developing a resource management plan for a ranch property in southern San Benito
County and is trying to determine if it had been part of a Mexican land grant

-graduate student needed to find books, articles, or websites on pre-Christian Basque mythology, specifically a deity associated with caves

-student looking at California high school exit exam information, specifically Latino students failure rate

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Random questions at the desk, 3/3/10

Today patrons I helped were:

- Looking for paper copies of several French language periodicals.

- Looking for a poem, published as a broadside, by Charles Bukowski.

- Looking for the consensus-based criteria for establishing diagnosis of a vegetative state.

Random questions at the desk 3/1/10

History of Lent.

Opiates effect on neurotransmitters and synapses.

Research by mycologist R.J. Wesson on use of "magic mushrooms" in Mazatec ritual ceremonies in Oaxaca.

Water, logging and environmental information about Clavey River in Tuolomne County.