Single Sign-On (SSO) and possible disruption to services

ICT are implementing Single Sign-On (SSO) for a number of University Services at the end of the month.

What is SSO?

Single sign-on (SSO) allows a user to sign on with university password to gain access to multiple applications and services without the necessity to logon to each system or service individually.

When will this be?

27th July and 30th July - 3rd August

Why are we doing this?

This is in response to feedback received from Students and to improve student experience.

Who will this affect?

Staff and Students

What will be affected?

Whilst SSO is being implemented and authentication is being switched to SSO, access to these following services may be intermittent.

·         Novell (Local PC Logon)

·         Blackboard/BREO

·         GSuite/GoogleMail

·         PebblePad

·         SiD Online

·         Library Systems – (Discover, Catalogue, e-Books, e-journals, book renewals, Repository, reading lists)

·         Webprint

·         MyPC (Book a PC)

·         Refworks (old and new)

·         Office365

·         Staff Website (In.beds)

ProQuest downtime 3am - 11am Sunday 19th August

We've been warned of downtime for all ProQuest products from 3am to 11am, Sunday 19th August. This includes

• ProQuest ebooks
• ProQuest databases, including ASSIA and British Nursing Database
• RefWorks

Service Unavailable messages, and wrong formatting in Library Catalogue

We're having issues with this error message appearing when trying to access many of our resources, including DISCOVER.

If this happens to you, please try refreshing the page. The fault is intermittent and we are working on finding a solution.

We are also finding that the library catalogue page is not always displaying correctly, e.g. like this:

Again, if you see this, just refresh the page and it should go back to normal.

SID Online (Student Information Desk) downtime tomorrow, 18th July

SID Online (Student Information Desk) will be having some downtime on 18th July 2018. We expect the system to be unavailable during the morning.

Please use library email address for any library enquiries you may have at this time libraryideas@beds.ac.uk or the SiD email for any SiD enquiries sid@beds.ac.uk.

Credo's platform refresh is now live

Credo reference released their platform updates yesterday, making minor changes to the look and feel of the site. They've streamlined the search box on the home screen, enriched the search results with other types of content, such as the Mind Map, and featured Real-time Reference content more prominently in the search results and on Topic Pages.

Problems accessing some articles from DISCOVER off-campus - solved

We believe we have solved the problem accessing some articles from DISCOVER off-campus.  If you continue to have trouble, please let us know.

Stale Request error message

We are having a problem this morning with people getting this error message when trying to access resources via UK Access Management Federation. This particularly affects ebooks.

Investigation is underway and we hope this will be fixed soon.

Problems accessing some articles from DISCOVER off-campus

We're found that off-campus users are having trouble accessing some articles from DISCOVER, specifically those with the green Access Full Text button, getting this login screen:

We are working to resolve this but in the meantime if this does happen to you, choose the "Shibboleth login" option, for "Select your region or group" scroll down to "UK Higher Education", then choose "University of Bedfordshire" from the list. You'll then get a UoB login screen, use your usual username and password.

SID Online Downtime - 5th-6th July 2018

SID Online (Student Information Desk) will be having a major upgrade on 5th-6th July 2018. We expect the system to be unavailable during those 2 days.

Please use library email address for any library enquiries you may have at this time libraryideas@beds.ac.uk or the SiD email for any SiD enquiries sid@beds.ac.uk.

DISCOVER top search terms in June

Here's what everyone has been searching for in DISCOVER this month:

NewsBank Special Reports July 2018

NewsBank’s Special Reports are news articles, images, maps and other useful content grouped for convenience under specific topics and themes. They enable users to quickly locate information while helping them gain better insight into current global issues and events.

Following is a listing of ones that may be of particular interest at this time.

July Topics
World Health - UV Safety Awareness Month
World Cup Soccer - 2018
People - Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy
Issues in the News
Natural Disasters
World Travel and Tourism

Additional featured Reports covering current issues and events
World Economics
World Terrorism and Conflict
World Politics and Government
School and Campus Security
World Environment
Science and Health in the News

Each Special Report features current and retrospective coverage with new articles added daily.

Special Reports are easily accessible from the left side bar on your online resource menu page, on search screens and the Other NewsBank Products link in full-text newspaper products.

This video shows you how to find Special Reports, what they are and how they can be used.  http://newsbank.com/videos/how-find-use-special-reports