Procedure for Clearing Abandoned Study Rooms

This came out of a librarians meeting earlier in the year, when we had received some complaints from students about study rooms being left 'abandoned' with people's belongings in them for long periods of time.

Jeff has modified the sign at the end of the study room corridor on the 2nd floor to note the '20 min rule.'

PROCEDURES FOR CLEARING AN ABANDONED STUDY ROOM

This procedure should be followed when a group of students complains that they are looking for a study room, and there is a room left abandoned with people’s belongings in it.

Staff member will notify a supervisor or librarian (or Peter Gurney, Dana or Jeff if a supervisor is not available) of the situation and:

- the supervisor verifies that 3 people are waiting for the room and there are no other rooms in the area which could be used

- when possible, if there is another room with 2 or fewer students in it, they should be asked to vacate first, before the abandoned room is used.

- 20 minutes after the initial report the supervisor goes to the group room, verifies again that no other room could be used, moves the abandoned possessions to a corner of the room and leaves the flyer explaining the group room policy (Flyers are found at the Loan services desk and also in the 2nd Floor RRUnit staff lounge filing cabinet)

During evenings and weekends, Library Patrol will handle the clearing of abandoned rooms.

Important Changes to Crown Copyright

The Government of Canada announced in February that Crown Copyright and Licensing (CCL) will no longer require users to seek permission for the reproduction of Government of Canada documents and publications for non-commercial purposes (unless otherwise specified in the materials).

Users reproducing works for non-commercial purposes must:

• Exercise due diligence in ensuring the accuracy of the materials reproduced.
• Indicate both the complete title of the work reproduced, as well as the author organization.
• Indicate that the reproduction is a copy of an official work that is published by the Government of Canada and that the reproduction has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of the Government of Canada.

Permission is still required to revise, adapt, or translate Government of Canada documents and publications even for non-commercial purposes, and in all cases when the purpose of reproduction is commercial in nature.

Read more.

From the March 2011 Staff Update

New in the catalogue -- Permitted Uses and Print on Demand

Two new options are now available in the catalogue (Endeca interface) --

1) Permitted Uses
All online resource records now provide information about their permitted uses under our licenses. You will see Permitted Uses icons on the hitlist, and more information about permitted uses on detailed records. Users are informed whether material from each online title may be reproduced in Blackboard and course web pages, and in printed course packs. The Permitted Uses information is linked to a page providing a permanent link to the title that may be used anywhere, and also more information about the title's license. A contact to request this information is provided if it has not yet been recorded in the database. Permitted Uses information is available through the Endeca catalogue, and also from the e-journal and e-resource tabs on the library homepage.

2) Print on Demand
Users may now order printed copies of selected online resources through our print-on-demand program. Some 220,000 online titles (out-of-copyright titles, scanned from our collections) now display a Print Book option, in the hitlist drop-menu of options for these titles, and also on their detailed records. Users may order a printed copy of the title through the University of Toronto Bookstore Espresso Print on Demand service or download a pdf to print themselves. More print on-demand options, and more print-on-demand titles, including recently published materials, are coming soon.

Sian Meikle
Dec 13, 2010

About old exams...

We're getting quite a few questions about which old exams are available online here, so I imagine you are too. Here's some information:

St. George Faculty of Arts and Science
We have a rolling set of the 3 most recent years of exams available online, by policy of the Faculty of Arts and Science. The current set is December 2007 - August 2010. Old exams are handled as a batch through ITS, by arrangement with the Faculty of Arts and Science. Exams are loaded once annually, in the fall.

Links to old exams for a given course will appear automatically in the Blackboard Library Resources page, if they are available. Only exams are made available through this channel -- term tests and exam solutions are not, although individual faculty members may choose to post them on their course pages.

If a user is enquiring after a specific exam that they cannot find, here are some helpful facts. By Arts and Science policy, all exams are posted, unless they have been restricted -- this happens when a professor makes an application to the Faculty, on the grounds that an exam shouldn't be published because it will affect the ability to set future exams without repetition. Another explanation for a lack of previous exams is that a course may not have been offered in a given session. And finally, course codes sometimes change. I generally direct the student to the instructor for more information.

St George other faculties
At present, we are not mounting exams for any other St. George campus faculty through the library, though we would be very open to doing so, if you get enquiries. Please contact me, to discuss further.

Scarborough
The librarians at Scarborough work directly with instructors to make some exams and course tests available. Again, they appear directly in Blackboard Library Resource pages where available.

Mississauga
UTM exams are available at http://eres.utm.utoronto.ca.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/courseindex.asp. The collection is not limited to the most recent 3 years.

Sian Meikle
Dec 6, 2010

=======Additional entry from Sian Meikle, Dec 9th:
-- here is more information about where the exams collections are linked from:

1) Library website: From the page-top navigation menu, choose Research -> Special Collections -> Exams and Course Collections.
This takes you to http://eres.library.utoronto.ca/courseindex.asp. Old exams are the first option on the page. You go to http://exams.library.utoronto.ca.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca.

2) Blackboard course web pages: choose the Library Resources link on the left menu. You will get at least one, and possibly two, links to old exams:
(a) There is always a link to the old exams collection at the bottom of the page. This takes you straight into the Old Exams collection (http://exams.library.utoronto.ca.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca)
(b) If the old exams collection includes exams for your course, you will also see a link at the top of the Library Resources page, taking you straight to those exams in the course collection:

===============Additional entry from Cris Sewerin, Dec 9th:
there is a collection of old exams that perhaps was missed since it is outside of Fac. Arts & Science : the Skule (engineering) exams: http://courses.skule.ca/. Would it be possible to add it?

Gerstein & Information Commons Support Changes

Gerstein & Information Commons Support Changes

All staff,

The Information Commons (IC) Support for public workstations & printers and instruction labs is being consolidated in Robarts under the direction of Mark Leighton as of next Monday, March 15th.

Contact with IC regarding public equipment will be handled very similarly to current practice. That is, with the assistance of all staff, Jeff will continue to be informed about any problems with public equipment. Jeff will also continue as Gerstein's contact with the IC support team, reporting equipment problems via their new OneStop service (416-978-0429 or email icicle.support@utoronto.ca ).

If there are minor equipment problems and Jeff is unavailable, please email or voicemail Jeff.

If there are major equipment problems and Jeff is unavailable, please call the IC support team at 416-978-0429 and then email/voicemail Jeff about the issue.

Sandra
March 10, 2010

Zotero now enabled for our catalogue

A quick note to let you know that the new catalogue interface is now zotero-enabled, with thanks to Bilal Khalid and Ken Yang in the Information Technology Services department for their work in making this possible.

For the metadata-inclined, we are using unapi with RIS format for the zotero data import currently, as it was the most expedient method for making this useful service available. This is roughly equivalent to the catalogue data we export to RefWorks. As time permits, we'll be switching to unapi with MODs, as it allows us to make a richer view of our catalogue records available to zotero.

Sian Meikle
Nov 8, 2010

Vision enhancement/magnifier for public PC's

Our public PC's have a magnifying option for those who require a visual aid to use a computer. The Information Commons has placed its location at:

1. "Start" button
   
2. Accessibility
3. Magnifier

Doing the above immediately places a small rectangular section at the top of the screen. This area magnifies whatever the mouse cursor is hovering over.

Alternatively...instead of choosing "3. Magnifier", in the same folder there is a "wizard" that will walk the user through the process of selecting personal visual settings of a greater variety than just a magnifier.
The wizard is a very helpful tool and should be pointed out to all users interested in this type of assistance.

This is a standard component of the existing Windows XP operating system. When this operating system changes to Windows 7 (probably in 2011) the location of this tool may be different.

Library Shelf Browse

Library Shelf Browse is now available in the new catalogue interface. A news item, announcing and illustrating it, is linked from our homepage, here:
http://discover.library.utoronto.ca/news/online-library-shelf-browse

Key features include:
-- the ability to browse shelves at a single library, or across all of our collections, including our online collections
-- the ability to see all of our books, even those that are checked out right now

Shelf browse is available for all of our classification systems -- Library of Congress, Dewey, and the As-Is schema used in our Rare Books collections.
While we still have a couple of issues relating to accented characters to resolve, we hope that you and your users will find it useful! We'd welcome your feedback and suggestions for future development of shelf browse.

Sian Meikle
Oct 13, 2010
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NOTE: if the user selects a specific location (gerstein) the browse search results will not include online material

Locate DOI's in PubMed instead of Ovid MEDLINE

I checked into & was surprised to discover that there were no doi's to be found in the MEDLINE citations I checked.
Below is... ...Ovid's response.
The principal message: if you need to locate doi's, don't do it via OvidMEDLINE; use PubMed or other databases.

Susanne Tabur
Oct. 4, 2010

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I checked with our database production team for information on why some articles had DOI information in PubMed and not in Ovid’s Medline. They told me that the NLM hosts some DOI information on a separate server and the NLM does not provide it to any vendors. I’m including database production’s response to me incase it has useful information that I failed to mention. When I asked for clarification on their statement below I was told that while it was in theory possible to daily data mine the NLM site for data they hold beyond what they provide in the XML feed it was outside the scope of our offering.

We do not receive fields in the set with our XML daily update feeds from PubMed and never will. All Three of the records sighted by the customer the DOI information is only available on the NLM site in the field and is not provided to anyone. NLM’s response is this data lives on another server and will never be provided to outside customers. The only DOI information we receive is in the XML tag from NLM. When they provide us with all of the DOI information they have on their web site we will load it into our OvidSP version of Medline.

Neil Christiansen at OvidMedline
Sept. 30, 2010

Linking to Multiple Databases in Scholars Portal

This is also an fyi on how to combine databases on Scholars Portal if you like. The information is online at http://spotdocs.scholarsportal.info/display/spsearchdocs/How+to+link+to+ScholarsPortal+Search.

You will see you can link together as many databases as you want and of your choice. The list of long names is not up to date on the site above.

To find the names not listed on the link/page above when you're on the search page at Scholars Portal and go to the list of specific databases, put your mouse over the ?, question mark and you can see the database long name needed in the menu bar of your browser. Our user info is utca and utca416.

Richard Hydal
Sept 30, 2010

Group holds with UTS items

I was reviewing procedures that UTS Library staff would like us to follow, yesterday. So, I thought it timely to send a reminder that, when placing holds in Sirsi Workflows, if there is a copy of the book charged out from the UTS, as well as at other UTL libraries, a group hold should not be used. Non-UTS borrowers cannot borrow the UTS copies and UTS borrowers will need to have the UTS library place their holds. The UTS borrowers will not be able to place hold requests through the Request Item service, either. They will be able to request Inter-campus delivery.

Lari Langford
September 16, 2010

ILL Pickup - policy change

When patrons currently come in "after hours" to pick up books that ILL borrowing have obtained on their behalf, the staff member who is retrieving the book is asked to get the person to sign the request form and remove it. As of Monday the request form will no longer be in the book and no signature will be required. The book can simply be handed over to the patron.

Bonnie Horne
August 20, 2010

Card and Change Machines

Coping two messages we recieved recently about changes in the Cash-to-Card, Visitors Card, and Change machines.


1. The visitor card dispenser has finally been installed at Gerstein between the existing cash-to-card machine and bill changer across from the Resource Sharing department. Card dispensing has been disabled on the two cash-to-card machines and all instructions on how to purchase a card have been covered over on these machines.

New signage is coming soon including a UTL Cash Card Policy sign (similar to the one posted above all the cash-to-card machines at Robarts) that will now enforce the "no refund" policy on the purchase of the visitor card.

Julian Mitchell
August 12, 2010


2. We finally have our dedicated machine for dispensing visitor cards. As well, the card dispenser on the "Cash-to-Card" machine has been disabled. It's now pretty difficult to buy a visitor card by mistake.

As of today the Cashier's Office will no longer reimburse us for cards bought in error. Please do not buy back any visitor cards.

Peter Gurney
September 29, 2010

Statistical software - locations on campus

When UofT patrons ask where they can go to access statistical software such as SAS or SPSS, here are some locations you can direct them to:

1. The Map and Data Library has SAS , SPSS, Stata and NVIVO on the computers in the Robarts, 5th floor lab. Students with UTORid may use these computers in the lab any time the library is open and the lab is not being used to teach a class. There is one computer in the "inside area" of the Map and Data Library with MATLAB, available from 11-5 Mon. to Fri. More info


2. There are many online books that can help patrons as well (e.g. enter SPSS into the "e-resources" tab or the catalogue for many e-books about SPSS.


3. CHASS (Computers in the Humanities and Social Sciences) -- Located on the 14th floor of Robarts Library. Patrons can contact CHASS to determine if they are in a department supported by CHASS: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/about/contactus.html CHASS has various statistical software such as SAS, SPSS, MATLAB, etc. http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/facilities/serversoft.html


4. Discovery Commons in the Medical Sciences Building (MSB), Room 3172
Discovery Commons has computers with SAS, SPSS and "R" Open Source Software available for faculty and student use. Discovery Commons is open Monday to Friday from 8:00am-6:00pm. For more information please contact Discovery Commons at 416-978-8504, or discovery.commons@utoronto.ca. Patrons who are not part of the Faculty of Medicine can contact the Discovery Commons to determine if they are eligible to use these facilities.


5. Education Commons, OISE
Education Commons provides Workshops on SPSS and NVivo. For more information, please visit the Education Commons website at:
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ec/Home/Workshops_Events/Workshops/index.html.
Patrons who are not part of the Faculty of Education can contact the Education Commons to determine if they are eligible to use these facilities.


6. Statistical Consulting Service
The Statistical Consulting Service (SCS) provides fee-based consulting services, including study
design, data analysis and interpretation, on all statistical aspects of business and academic research. Their clients include university researchers and graduate students from the University of Toronto and researchers from other public or private institutions. For more information, please visit: http://www.utstat.utoronto.ca/pagecontent/index.php?pageid=155


7. University of Toronto at Mississauga
The University of Toronto at Mississauga offers workshops (SPSS, GIS, Excel, etc) for instructors, TAs, and students (graduate and undergraduate).
For more information, please contact Andrew Nicholson at andrew.nicholson@utoronto.ca.

The UTM Library also has a number of computers where students can access software.
More information is available at: http://library.utm.utoronto.ca/faq/software

LIRA accounts & personal info

The following should be helpful when patrons ask about what information is stored when they scan a credit card or driver's license (or give an email address for a manually created account).

The Terms & Conditions are clearly displayed on the LIRA station monitor. (This way the patron does not have to access a PC to see the Terms & Conditions an a library webpage). These Terms & Conditions describe which digits from a driver's license and credit card are used for account management. It states: "Your personal information is collected & used as needed for proper administration of your Library and Internet Resource Account and related purposes. It is protected in accordance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. If you have any questions, please contact the Help Desk Manager at 416-978-5130, 130 St. George Street, Robarts Library, Information Commons, Room 111."

So, if a patron does not want to provide the required identification to have a LIRA account created (either via the LIRA station or via a staff member), you can:

1. Politely state that we cannot create an account for them due to our policy and they are free to go elsewhere. There are signs by the LIRA stations with the names and locations of other places patrons can go to for internet access (nearby Kinko's and public libraries).

2. Additionally, the patron can be directed to the Help Desk Manager of the Info Commons (contact info in the LIRA monitor screen).

3. The url of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act is also displayed on the LIRA station monitor if the patron would like to consult that.


Heather

Recent Changes to Scopus

Just a brief note about Scopus and recent changes to this tool

1. single login allows search of Scopus, Science Direct, and the new Hub & all are now searchable in one interface
2. searching in Science Direct section allows searching of images (it searches the text and captions of images plus the 20 words preceding and following the image in the text)
3. it is possible to search the Methodology section of full text articles within the SciVerse applications
4. two new citation metrics are available (SNIP & SJR)
5. there is increased coverage of journals in the humanities & socila sciences
6. increased interoperability including options for ITS departments to implement api's

Coverage remains 1995/96 to the present

Susanne Tabur
Sept 21, 2010

AskON Hours

The AskON Academic hours are as follows. Feel free to share this with any of our other UTL lists.

AskON for Academic (college & university) libraries:

• Mon-Thurs: 11am-10pm
• Fri-Sun: 11am-5pm
• Winter Holiday: December 12 to January 10
• Holiday Closures: New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Civic Holiday, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve Day

AskON for Public Libraries

For those of you wanting to use AskON from home as a public library patron, here are the public service hours:

• Mon-Thurs: 12:30-8:30pm;
• Fri-Sat: 12:30-4:30;
• Sun: 1:30-4:30pm

SPREAD THE WORD!
It would be great for all of us to let our friends, family and school librarians know about AskON and eResources – feel free to plug these often.

• For AskON, patrons need to visit their public library homepage to find the AskON button for reference chat – see http://askon.ca/en/index.shtml to choose the library nearest you.
• The eResources are available to everyone by visiting http://eresources.knowledgeontario.ca/.

It’s worth noting that Toronto Public Library is not part of AskON – but anyone in Ontario can visit the homepage of the next nearest library system to use the service.


Kim Silk
Sept 8, 2010

Summary of public colour copying and scanning options on campus

This is a summry of current colour photocopying and scanning options

Robarts - Information Commons

Information Commons has color scanners on the 1st floor, Robarts. Users scan files and then can print them off on IC's color printer.

Digital Studio has scanning facilities, including color http://www.utoronto.ca/ic/digitalstudio/index.html

Robarts - Map Library

Has color scanning, no color copying. (Marcel Fortin)

ROM

Provides color scanning and copying facilities for the general public. (Arthur Smith)

Pratt Library (Victoria College)
Has several scanners available for the public (phone call to Pratt Sept 1 2010).

Kelly Library, St. Mikes

Has color scanning and printing. (richard carter)

Color Scanning and Printing @ Gerstein (not public)

The copier in the Library Admin office can scan and send the resultant pdf to a staff member's Z drive. Bonnie has a color printer in her office.
Sept 9/10 entry by Jeff: instead of using Bonnie's printer, the scanned document could be emailed to the user. The user could then pick it up from our public computers and print it to our colour printer. One could use a flash drive to transfer the file as well.

External User Fees - institions subsidizing their users

On the matter of external user fees, Lari Langford has just sent a note with our updated user fees. I also want to let you know that Ryerson Library will pay the borrowing, stack and computer access fee for their graduate students, faculty and staff, and this agreement will extend for the next three years. McMaster Library will also continue to pay this fee for the coming year. The Provost has also been successful in making an agreement with York to provide a partial subsidy for the access fee for York graduate students. The agreements for the coming year have just been concluded and will become effective September 1, 2010.

Carole Moore / Aug 31, 2010


Users requiring more information on their institutions subsidies, must contact their institution.

Allison Bell / Aug 31, 2010

New Borrowing and Access Fees for External Users

Beginning Sept. 1, 2010, fees for external borrower cards will increase to:

$250.00 - for 1 year
$160.00 - for 6 months
$100.00 - for 3 months
$110.00 - for Seniors (for 1 year)

These fee changes apply to Direct Borrwers (faculty, staff, and graduate students from Canadian universities) and to other external patrons who purchase Research Reader cards. There are no changes to the fees for Alumni borrowing cards.

Research Reader cards are issued at Reader Registration, Robarts Library, only. Direct Borrower cards are issued at Reader Registration, Robarts, and at UTM and UTSC libraries.

New, this fall, is a fee for access to the Robarts Library stacks. Short-term visiting researchers (i.e. faculty, staff, and graduate students from other universities) will be able to purchase a stack pass at the Information Desk, which can be used for up to 7 days. The fee is $20.00.

Those who wish longer-term access to the stacks, but who do not wish to purchase borrowing privileges, can purchase the Robarts Stack Access Card at the Reader Registration Desk. Issued annually, with an expiry date of September 30, this card costs $50.00. The card colour for this year is yellow and the expiry date is written on the card.

Full details about these new fees are outlined on the Reader Registration web-pages. Reader Registration staff have information about which Canadian universities are subsidizing the cost of borrowing or access cards. Please refer inquiries to these staff (416-978-7694).

Please note: Undergraduates from other universities, community college students, secondary and elementary school students are not eligible to become borrowers or to purchase stack access.