{"id":333,"date":"2014-10-06T13:45:14","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T18:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/?p=333"},"modified":"2014-10-07T07:45:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T12:45:47","slug":"troubleshooting-electronic-resource-problems-reported-by-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/2014\/10\/06\/troubleshooting-electronic-resource-problems-reported-by-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Troubleshooting Electronic Resource Problems Reported by Students"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although my job title is user experience librarian, I help out quite a bit with managing electronic resources in my library. Over the past few years, I&#8217;ve gone down deep in the weeds countless times trying to figure out what went wrong when a user reported being unable to access an electronic resource. Some times it&#8217;s just one article, some times it&#8217;s an entire database. The possible points of failure (or confusion) for the user are many. Here&#8217;s an exhaustive list (for me, at least) of what commonly goes wrong for our users.<\/p>\n<p><strong>user names and passwords<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>entering the wrong user name and\/or password (e.g., typos, misremembered logins, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>not knowing what their user name and password is<\/li>\n<li>not realizing that the resource requires you to create your own username and password<\/li>\n<li>trying to access the resource by going straight to the resource via web search instead of using library&#8217;s link (that goes through some sort of authentication system)<\/li>\n<li>user has logins for more than one institution in a consortium and uses the wrong one<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>authentication systems<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>trying to access the resource by going straight to the resource via web search instead of using library&#8217;s link (that goes through some sort of authentication system)<\/li>\n<li>resource hasn&#8217;t been listed correctly in the authentication system (URL for the resource has changed)<\/li>\n<li>resource requires some new special set up in the authentication system<\/li>\n<li>user is from another library (that may be part of a local or state consortium) but doesn&#8217;t realize that resource is strictly limited to users at that specific library<\/li>\n<li>authentication system is blocked by firewall\/security settings on user&#8217;s computer or network<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>browsers<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>database requires specific browser (often Internet Explorer)<\/li>\n<li>browser settings need to be changed to allow for specific functionality in the resource<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>licensing issues<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>user is now an alum and doesn&#8217;t realize off-campus access is now gone<\/li>\n<li>license doesn&#8217;t allow walk-ins and\/or alumni to use database<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>problems caused by the vendor<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>resource is down for all subscribing institutions<\/li>\n<li>database is searchable but full text links no longer working<\/li>\n<li>vendor has mistakenly shut down access for the library<\/li>\n<li>vendor has intentionally shut down access for the library because of suspicious use or expired license<\/li>\n<li>vendor hasn&#8217;t communicated changes in its holdings to services that rely on that information (such as knowledgebases that help libraries keep track of online journal access)<\/li>\n<li>database has agreed to an unusual restrictive license from a publisher whose content is aggregated (e.g., EBSCO and <em>Harvard Business Review<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>library has cancelled subscription but forgot to remove all links to it on their website, catalog, discovery layers, knowledgebases, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>availability options<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>user doesn&#8217;t notice the full text links on a record<\/li>\n<li>user unaware of interlibrary loan as a service option<\/li>\n<li>user has found content that isn&#8217;t part of a library&#8217;s subscription in a database<\/li>\n<li>user unaware that resource might be available elsewhere as open access (e.g., in an institutional repository, on the author&#8217;s website, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>user has found book or periodical record in the catalog but doesn&#8217;t recognize that the resource is print only<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>out of date info in knowledgebases<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>library has incorrectly listed a resource as something that is subscribed to<\/li>\n<li>journal publisher or database publisher hasn&#8217;t communicated to the knowledgebase vendor changes in holdings (I&#8217;m looking at you Gale)<\/li>\n<li>knowledgebase vendor hasn&#8217;t yet updated their system with latest info from journal publishers or database vendors<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>OpenURL linking<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>database where citation-only record was first found failed to create a properly formed OpenURL<\/li>\n<li>database that the link resolver menu sent the user to is unable to properly interpret incoming OpenURL<\/li>\n<li>user didn&#8217;t notice link resolver option in the database (usually labeled locally as &#8220;Find it at [name of institution]&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>user didn&#8217;t understand what to do in the link resolver menu<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>URLs<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>user is trying to re-visit a URL saved from a previous session (instead of using a permalink)<\/li>\n<li>permalink that the user got from the database results previously didn&#8217;t include URL syntax that would route it through the library&#8217;s authentication system<\/li>\n<li>permalink that the professor put on the course website or the learning management system isn&#8217;t proxied<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>problems specific to ebooks<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>user expected full book could be downloaded<\/li>\n<li>user didn&#8217;t realize complexity of getting started (such as registering for an Adobe ID)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>problems specific to articles<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>user has a found a short article but mistakenly believes it&#8217;s not the whole article<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although my job title is user experience librarian, I help out quite a bit with managing electronic resources in my library. Over the past few years, I&#8217;ve gone down deep in the weeds countless times trying to figure out what &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/2014\/10\/06\/troubleshooting-electronic-resource-problems-reported-by-students\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,15],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-databases","tag-user-experience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":339,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenfrancoeur.com\/beatingthebounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}