[school] New Dealer

[siderea]

As one of my fellow probably-soon-to-be-graduating classmates noted, we are confronting a big life change. And it's scary.

I don't know what frightens her, but the thought of my crack supply academic research db access being cut off gives me heart palpitations

Comments

[mellyjc]

Hm. I know that as alum we get a year access to school library and just assumed the dbs were included in that. Now I wonder.

[lucretia_borgia]

Oooh...is that remote access, or only from physical presence in NYPL branches?

[shalmestere]

If it's anything like my workplace (I work for one of NYC's other two library systems :-D), the DB web page will indicate which ones can be accessed remotely, and which must be used in-house. (Presumably siderea has already scoped out the possibilities, but just in case... :-D)

[siderea]

*nodnodnodnodnod* They have even more no-doubt-wonderful stuff available in-branch. The little house icon means you can use it from "home". (Search in page for "EBSCOhost".) :D

[siderea]

Home. OK, start on this page, and instead of clicking the tickyboxen, click the associated text for any given topic space. It brings up a (really long) list of electronic resources, and by each one there are icons. The house means home access. Psychology, if that's your personal interest, too, is under History & Social Sciences ("Your search returned 281 database(s)."!)

[parslaanna]

Likely not the same situation for a university librarian, but a friend of mine is a public librarian and as a city employee, she is not allowed to accept any gifts at all -- whether it's flowers or a plate of cookies. Silly, I know, but thems the rules in her city.

[m_danson]

I've sent flowers to all of the admin assistants at all of my universities without problems.

[siderea]

City employees are not at all the same situation as university librarians. And no, those aren't just the rules in her city: pretty much all city employees (and government employees) everywhere in the US are forbidden to receive gifts.

Re: Your information is not quite correct

[siderea]

the BPL does subscribe to EBSCOHost and its Psych/BS collection.

Er, well, thanks for letting me know. It's not like one can find that out from the page you linked to. If you guys really have "been trying to get more folks to use them", it wouldn't hurt to -- anywhere on that page -- actually have the string "EBSCO" appear. Nothing on that page indicates whose "Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection" it is, nor on the "info page" for that link. It's only on the "?" page that you find out just what it is -- which page is hosted on the EBSCOHost site. So it doesn't show up when you try to search bpl.org.

In fact, googling "ebscohost site:bpl.org" turns up a list of pages which say variously:

First hit: nothing about the psychology collection in the list of collections ("Last updated: August 13, 2007");
Second hit: that the only thing you have in EBSCO is the Books in Print Plus Reviews, and that can only be accessed in-branch ("Last Updated: 12/29/1999");
Third hit: same as second ("Copyright 1997-98, BPL

Re: Your information is not quite correct

[siderea]

P.S. Also, when you get that 404 page at bpl.org, it has a search box "To search for an existing page on bpl.org, use this search box." I just tried to use it. When I clicked the button it... didn't do anything at all. It seems to be broke.

Also, I just went through the whole library card rigamarole system and it was extremely unclear; that however is a saga for some other person to put up with.

Please feel free to print all this out and staple it to the foreheads of whomever at BPL you feel it would be the most useful to so do.

[wetdryvac]

*chuckles*

Thank you for passing this on! $100 well spent, methinks.