Access to Mintel

For reason too complicated and too boring to expand upon, Mintel is no longer available through Athens.  Instead you can access Mintel by logging into Moodle and clicking the link in the Library Resources box on the top right of the home page.  Happy Mintelling!

A short note about using Mintel and Passport GMID on Athens

The short note is this: registration is required before use.  For Mintel it's a one-off, and merely entails entering name and email address, course and course end-date.  And that's it.  Here's an access guide  that says pretty much the same thing, but it's better written and has pictures.
For Passport GMID, you need to create an account, entering similar information.  However you'll need your email address to login to Passport each time you want to use this resource.  An added complication is that personal emails - from the likes of Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail will be rejected.  Use either your @mydbs.ie or your business email address.  Personally, I'd use my mydbs.ie account.  

Accessing ebooks on Dawsonera

We use Dawsonera as our ebook platform.  We like Dawsonera.  We like Dawsonera so much that we have over 1500 titles available as ebooks on this platform.

Recently, Dawsonera did sometime that has caused us a little inconvenience; they changed their password criteria.  Previously, we were able to set up students with their student number and date of birth as username and password.  After changing password requirements, this is no longer possible, as all Dawsonera passwords now need upper & lower case (capital and small) letters and numbers.  The process of setting up students with library. EBSCO, and Dawsonera is semi-automated.  The "semi-" part means that it is not feasible to create passwords for Dawsonera, so we don't do that anymore.  If you don't have a Dawsonera login, you can skip the next paragraph.

In addition to changing the password criteria, Dawsonera seem to be invalidating existing passwords.  I say "seem" because it doesn't appear to be happening to everyone, yet  If your password still works, then hurrah!  However, that may change in the near future.

I welcome back readers who skipped the last paragraph and ask, then answer the question "how do I access ebooks on Dawsonera?"  Simple, through an Athens account.  Athens is an access management system used to manage access to electronic resources. If you have an Athens login, you can access all of the library's resources off-campus, including Dawsonera, with one login.

To access Dawsonera through Athens, either

1)            Login to MyAthens
               Click on the Resources Tab
               Click on Dawsonera
               You will be logged into Dawsonera automatically
Or

2)            Go to the Dawsonera website
               Go to the Athens/Shibboleth login
               Login with your Athens details

The next question then is "how do I get an Athens account?".  Contact the library - email is best for this purpose, and include your student number.  You should receive two emails, one will basically be an acknowledgement of your request sent by the library, the second will be sent by Athens and contain your account details.  If you don't receive the acknowledgement and/or the account details email, do contact the library again - and don't leave it too long before doing so. 

        

Emerald

We're reorganising how some of our resources are accessed.  Emerald, which is very popular with our business students is available as normal on-campus, but currently if you wish to access it off-campus, the simplest way is through Athens.  Contact the library to have an Athens account created.

Westlaws

No, it's not a typo, I meant Westlaws (plural).  Let me elaborate:

Westlaw UK:  We have purchased a subscription to this resource, which is like Westlaw.ie but contains UK law material.  A link for on-campus use is available from the e-library page of the library website.  It's also available through Athens.

Westlaw.ie: The good people of Westlaw.ie have seen fit to change its user interface - so it looks pretty much like Westlaw UK.  We have a very complicated way of ensuring that you can see this resource off-campus.  Currently it's available after logging into Moodle or Athens.  Because of the complicated nature of library stuff (please, don't ask), the old interface will still be available through Moodle for a while, but if you login to Athens and click the Westlaw.ie link, you'll be taken to the new interface.  The new interface is available on-campus through IP authentication.  

Athens

I've spoken before about how to access the library's electronic resources. Having looked at it, you may think, correctly, that it's a little complicated and that's fair enough.  A simpler way to access the library's resources is to get an Athens account.  Athens is an access management system that provides seamless, one-click access to the library's electronic resources.  To acquire an account, contact the library (by email) with your student number and your course code. Accounts are created in bulk, once per day, in the late afternoon.  Please don't mail the library first thing in the morning and then phone to complain 30 minutes later that you haven't received your account details.

When your account is created, you will receive an email with the subject line 'Your Athens account has been created' (or similar).  Follow the instructions in the mail to activate your account.  Your username is dbs followed by your password.  Hence if your student number is 1234567, your Athens username is dbs1234567.  When you activate your account, you get to choose a password, please make it memorable!

If you forget your password, you can go to this link

Forgotten Athens password

Enter your Athens username, (don't forget the dbs before your student number), the email associated with the account (the email account to which the initial Athens notification email was sent) and click ‘submit’.  The Athens people will send you an email that will contain a link to a page where you can reset your password.  If you have any difficulties, contact the library.

Accessing electronic resources and e-books

Following up from chatting about passwords, I'll briefly talk about how to access electronic resources via the library website - and e-books  The library pays a lot of money to purchase licences for electronic resources.  These resources provide access to bibliographic data and full-text for journal articles, newspaper articles, books, company, market sector and country reports and so on.  Our licences restrict who can see the material, so we have to use usernames and passwords.

Electronic Resources
On campus, go to the e-library page on the library website.  Go to the subscribed databases section and look at the instructions for each resource. 

Off-campus, access to most resources is through EBSCOHost Integrated Search (but here, I'll call it EBSCO)

You should be able to access EBSCO from the search box on the library home page, the advanced search page or the e-library page where you access individual databases.  If you are off-campus, you will need to login with your student number and date of birth, in format dd/mm/yyyy 

If you try to login to EBSCO from elsewhere, say for example, after searching for EBSCO on Google, it is possible that the EBSCO page won’t recognise your DBS login.  In this regard any error message that you see is important.  If you see error code 102, it means you are entering the wrong DBS username or password.  If you see error code 101, this means that the login page is not primed to accept DBS usernames and passwords, and therefore somehow, you've done something wrong!  If you see another error code, contact the library.

If you access EBSCO correctly, you will see the following on the login page:

Dublin Business School

Login with your student number and date of birth (in format dd/mm/yyyy). If you cannot login, please contact the library

If you do not see this on the login page, you will not be able to login to EBSCO

E-Books,
We purchase the vast majority of our e-books through Dawsonera.  On-campus you don't need a login  to see them.  Off-campus you will need a username and password.  Usernames and passwords have changed over time.  If you are new to DBS your username is your student number and your password is your date of birth in format dd/mm/yyyy (we try, though sometimes fail, to be consistent!).

There are two ways of finding out what e-books you can access. You can use the search/browse facilites on Dawsonera, or you search the library's online catalogue.  On the catalogue click the advanced button.  The third search box you see has the title 'Media type'.  In the dropdown menu, tick  the box next to E-books. In the search-term box, type your search-terms and away you go.

There is another way to access electronic resources, but I'm not going to write about that right now, other than to say that it's called Athens and you can look for details on the library blog or the e-library webpage (or even the next post down).   

MINTEL

In the immortal words of Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, good news everyone! Mintel is now available through EBSCOHost Integrated Search (EHIS). We're waiting on the IT department's web specialist adding Mintel (and a few other databases) to the search box on the library home page and indeed the list of databases on the advanced search page too. In the interim, to find Mintel on EHIS, go to the EHIS link on the e-library page

OpenAthens

If you have an OpenAthens account but are having difficulties with your username and/or password, here are two ways of circumventing that problem:

1) Your username always starts dbs... so if your student number is 1234567, your OpenAthens username will be dbs1234567. Simples. If you enter dbs and nothing happens, remember, you need to request an OpenAthens account from the library.

2) If you can't remember your password, there's a page on the MyAthens website where you can reset your password. Under the login boxes, there is a link Login help On this page, under the section Forgotten passwords is another link where you can reset your Athens password.

Mintel

Mintel is a market research database that provides access to reports on consumer behaviour, product innovation and competitive marketing strategies. It is currently accessed via a link on Moodle. We have to change this however. Shortly, the link on Moodle will be removed. Instead on-campus, you will directly access Mintel via a link on the e-library page of the library website. If you want to access Mintel off-campus, talk to us about getting an Open Athens account set up (and you really should you know) or alternatively you should soon be able to access Mintel from the search box on the library home page. We're sorry for the inconvenience, but if you get an Open Athens account, you'll hopefully see it's no inconvenience at all really.

JSTOR goes mobile

As use of the Internet through mobile devices increases, an increasing number of websites and services now have mobile-friendly versions. JSTOR have now followed EBSCO in developing a mobile version of their service, JSTOR Mobile. As the name suggests, it's a version of the JSTOR electronic resource specifically tailored for mobile devices. It's still at the beta stage, so what's described below might change.

As you'd expect, the interface is a stripped down version of JSTOR



You enter your search topic and get a list of results. If you click on a result, you will be presented with a mobile-friendly citation as seen below



The authors' names are hyperlinks that lead to results of searches for the author, you can email yourself, or immediately click, a link to the full-text in the "full" JSTOR site or you can view individual pages.

On-campus, if you are connected via a wi-fi network, you won't need to login, but without wi-fi, or if you are off-campus, you will need to login. To access JSTOR this way, you will need an Athens account Contact the library for if you want to be set-up on Athens (and Athens account will give you access to "full"-JSTOR, Dawson, Lexis-Nexis and other DBS library subscribed resources). Mobile JSTOR is by no means perfect, but as stated above, this is a Beta release, so hopefully an improved product will be available soon.

JSTOR mobile is best used for only searching JSTOR and emailing the citations to yourself so you can read the articles on a PC or laptop at a later time. You shouldn't need to login to be able to do this.

Single Sign-On Update

We now have most of our resources set up in Athens, our single sign-on system. There are one or two still missing, but we are trying to address that. If you are a DBS student reading this and want stand alone access to (very nearly) all our resources anytime and anywhere then contact me. We will of course be announcing this with more fanfare in the near future.

Single sign on is coming to DBS library

We'll shortly be starting a trial of OpenAthens, which, to go all technical for a minute, is a framework for managing users' identity information and enabling secure access to an institution's electronic resources through a single username and password (single sign-on). I'll repeat that last bit. A single username and password for accessing all electronic resources. Now it may be that there are one or two resources that don't support this, but won't it be great to have if not all, then the vast majority of resources accessible in the one place via one username and password?

As we're starting with a trial, we can probably only make a few resources available this way initially. We'll get this set up for the new year, and more information will be forthcoming then.

Justis

To reiterate what's been said elsewhere, Justis is no longer available off-campus It's not gone forever, promise. More news in 2-4 weeks or thereabouts. On-campus, Justis is still available from here. We do apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Britannica Online

We are currently experiencing issues with Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Off-campus access and searching through the library homepage is currently unavailable. On-campus access is still available through the link on the elibrary page on the library website. We'll let you know when access is restored.

A period of transition

We think the new library website is much better than the old one. There's various changes that we have made, including a search box on the main page and a new 'Search All Resources'. As a consequence of this, we've had to change how a few databases are accessed off-campus. For the moment, access to Warc, Justis, Mintel and Westlaw will be through Moodle (Westlaw can also be searched off-campus via the new search interface). If you are asked for a password for Justis or Westlaw, please contact library staff.

Justis

Another day, another database. Justis is available on-campus only at the moment. Please bear with us as we arrange off-campus access. We'll let know when that happens

WARC Access

In the lead up to the new academic year, we are very busy. You will have seen the new website and the new search interface. One small issue is WARC access. We are in the process of making alternative arrangements for on and off-campus access. WARC is now available on-campus from this link. Please bear with us while we find a home for off-campus access.

WARC Access revisited

I'm glad I don't work for WARC. It would seem that they received a lot of feedback from academic institutions (I sent some feedback myself) concerning their switch to personalised logins earlier this week. In response to the feedback, the use of personalised logins for users at academic institutions that prefer other access methods, like us, has been discontinued. Access to WARC is now back to normal, hooray. You don't need to create a personalised login to access WARC, unless you really want to that is. Well done to WARC for being so flexible and responsive.

WARC access

You can ignore this post, unless you really want to create a personal login, full details above.

WARC have changed the way that users access their site. Personalised logins are now the way forward - there's an element of mea culpa here as we knew they were bringing them in, but what we didn't know, was that personalised logins are mandatory. The good people of WARC say there are a number of advantages to users:

• logins will will be easier to remember
• If you have cookies enabled, you can log in without entering any details (once you have registered)
• You can create profiles and folders accessible from any PC
• Personalised logins will enable users to customise delivery of content (when changes are made to WARC later in the year)

To register click the WARC link on 'Search All Resources' (which is a secret, so I can't put the link here), and follow the on-screen instructions. Check your profile and confirm your preferences (and your agreement with the terms and conditions of usage). You will be sent an email with a security PIN, which you will need to complete the registration process. Here's a registration guide. As of now, WARC can only be searched on a stand-alone basis, that is, it can't be searched by 'Search All Resources' or EBSCOHost Integrated Search, and we await further news about this.