Library System Scheduled Outage

Hello WesternU Community, On January 26th – 28th the Pumerantz Library will be performing a migration of our Library System. During this time, the Online Catalog and its features will be unavailable (item lookup, online renew, online holds, item due notices, etc.). Electronic Resources on the Library’s webpages will be available during this outage. Check-in and Check-out of materials can be done in person, item renewals and holds will be available in person or by phone. Physical items can be looked up using the Pumerantz Library Discovery Service on the Library’s homepage, but the item’s location may not be available. Library Staff can assist you in finding physical materials. If you have any questions or concerns about this outage, please contact the library at 909-469-5323 or email libsupport@westernu.edu. Thank you for your patience while we improve our library systems.

E-Journal Searching and slow results list

It has come to our attention that the E-Journal search feature available on our Hompage and Electronic Resources page is very slow while waiting for the full-text results list to appear. We have opened a support call with the vendor who provides this interface to assist us in rectifying the issue.

In the meantime, there is a stand alone E-Journal search interface that appears to provide faster results.

This interface is available at http://proxy.westernu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?profile=pfi

We will update this blog post as more information becomes available.

Thank you,
Library Support

Annual Reviews journals

Increases in journal prices combined with small budget increases have resulted in collection decisions needing to be made regarding bundled packages.

Bundled packages are sometimes referred to as “big deals”. Under this publisher model, the library commits to maintaining their current subscriptions with a publisher.  For an additional fee the publisher will allow the library access to hundreds and sometimes thousands of journals they previously did not have access to. 

However, during times of flat budgets and journal price increases, the library needs to evaluate these bundles to see if they are still cost effective.

Annual Reviews is our smallest bundled package with 25 titles and was selected first to evaluate. Over the past 5 years, 5 Annual Reviews titles have showed consistent high usage in comparison to the other titles in the bundle. With this information we decided to unbundle the package and only subscribe to the top five used journals below.

• Annual Review of Immunology -1996-present
• Annual Review of Medicine -1996-present
• Annual Review of Neuroscience -1996-present
• Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology - 1996-present
• Annual Review of Physiology - 1996-present

This move allowed us to save enough money so no further journal cancellations were necessary in 2015-16.

Further good news is the Annual Reviews licensing agreement will allow us to retain access to previously subscribed content. This means we will retain access to the below journals for the dates indicated. Any articles needed from these journals before or after the indicated dates may be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry -2008-2015

Annual Review of Biochemistry -1996-2015

Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering -1999-2015

Annual Review of Biophysics -1996-2015

Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology -1996-2015

Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering - 2010-2015

Annual Review of Clinical Psychology -2005-2015

Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics -1996-2015

Annual Review of Entomology  -1996-2015

Annual Review of Food Science and Technology -2010-2015

Annual Review of Genetics  -1996-2015

Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics -2000-2015

Annual Review of Marine Science  -2009-2015

Annual Review of Microbiology -1996-2015

Annual Review of Nutrition  -1996-2015

Annual Review of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease - 2006-2015

Annual Review of Phytopathology -1996-2015

Annual Review of Plant Biology -1996-2015

Annual Review of Psychology -1996-2015

Annual Review of Public Health  -1996-2015

eJournals Diabetes and Diabetes Care currently unavailable

UPDATE: Access has been restored 1/8/16

Diabetes and Diabetes Care are currently unavailable due to the end of the subscription year on 12/31/2015.  Although the Pumerantz Library did renew online access for 2016, the publisher has not yet posted our renewal in their system. Our subscription agent has been contacted and they have contacted the publisher to renew our subscription ASAP.

We will update this blog post when access has been restored.

Winter Break Closure 12-18 @ 5pm through 1-4 @ 7am

The Harriet K. and Philip Pumerantz library will be closed for Winter Break starting at 5pm on December 18th through January 3rd. During this time Interlibrary Loans and Document Delivery requests will not be processed. Regular service will resume January 4th, 2015.

E-Resource linking issue

UPDATE: The error has been fixed 1:33pm 12/4/2015

We are experiencing an issue with links to our E-Resources. The links are appending the characters "&_ga=1.69596441.805913980.1448897839" to the end of our links. Because this is not the actual URL you will see a proxy error or a page cannot be displayed error. Remove the extra characters from your address bar and try to load the page again.

We are working with the WesternU IT department to resolve the issue ASAP.

We will update this page with more information as it becomes available.

Micromedex URL change

Micromedex has updated their URL. Currently, if you use the link available from our eresources page you will see a Page Cannot Be Displayed error.

Please use the following link:

http://proxy.westernu.edu/login?url=http://www.micromedexsolutions.com/home/dispatch

We are updating our links ASAP.

Thank you