The following Scholars Portal Services will be unavailable on Monday May 24, 2010:

• Get it! @ Queen’s SFX linking
• Scholars Portal Search
• Scholars Portal Journals and E-Books
• RACER (interlibrary loan)
• RefWorks
• ODESI

All electrical power to the facilities housing the Scholars Portal servers will be offline, to allow for a federally-mandated upgrade to the transformers that support the building’s power.

We apologize for the service interruption, and look forward to Scholars Portal being back online on Tuesday May 25 2010.

• See also: ITServices’ announcement about the February 20th service outage

There will be reduced library access on Saturday, February 20th due to a university power upgrade in Dupuis Hall.

Full access will resume early Sunday morning.  We regret any inconvenience this downtime may cause.

Unavailable on February 20th:

• Off-campus access to online library resources (ejournals, ebooks, databases): the ‘Connect from Off-Campus’ web proxy service is unavailable.
• ‘My Library Account’ in QCAT Library Catalogue: renewing loans, checking fines, placing requests.
• From 3am – 6am: the Library Website (and most web-based services at Queen’s) will be unavailable.

Still Available on February 20th:

Access to the library catalogue will be limited.  A copy of our catalogue will be available for searching, but will not include the current status of materials.

• Temporary Library Catalogue

It will be possible to borrow and return materials at the circulation desk throughout the downtime.

Tips for On-Campus Access to Online Resources:

On-campus access to online library resources is still available, but you may encounter broken (non-functional) links in the temporary Library Catalogue and on the library website (due to the ‘Connect from Off-Campus’ service being unavailable).

In order to avoid broken links on February 20th, find online resources via the following methods:

1. Journals – use the Online Journal Search to find ejournals
2. EBooks – Find a Specific EBook Collection and then search within the specific ebook collection (ebook searching in the Library Catalogue not functional)
3. Research Databases – visit Databases or Articles to find a specific database or browse by subject

If you encounter a non-functional link that contains the following web proxy prefix:

• http://proxy.queensu.ca/login?url=http://isiknowledge.com/

You can remove the web proxy prefix to make the link work on campus:

• http://isiknowledge.com/

Queen’s final exams from December 2008 and April 2009 are now available in Exambank!  Exambank is the official database of past exam questions from courses offered at Queen’s University.

• Search Exambank

Due to a server upgrade, the Library’s website (http://library.queensu.ca) will be unavailable from 6am to 8am on Friday, September 4.  The Group Study Room booking system will be unavailable from 6am – noon.  We may experience intermittent website issues all morning.

• The QCAT Library Catalogue will not be affected by the outage; it will be available all morning.
• Our research databases and the Get It! @ Queen’s service will not be affected by the outage; they too will be available all morning.

To access library resources while our site is down, visit our Backup Temporary Library Homepage.

PLoS: Influenza is a new and experimental web site devoted to rapid sharing of current research in influenza. From its home page: “The current epidemic of swine-origin H1N1 influenza A virus highlights the need for the rapid exchange of scientific results and ideas. PLoS Currents: Influenza aims to enable this exchange by providing an open-access online resource for immediate, open communication and discussion of new scientific data, analyses, and ideas in the field of influenza. All content is moderated by an expert group of influenza researchers.” For background on the site, see For info http://www.plos.org/cms/node/480.

Are you interested in working in one of the Queen’s Libraries during the 2009/10 academic year? We have a variety of positions available for students who qualify for the Queen’s Work Study Program.

For more information:

Visit our Student Employment Opportunities website and contact us soon! In most cases, Library staff will begin reviewing applications in mid-August, with interviews starting shortly thereafter.

From 23 July 2009 until 31 August 2009, Queen’s has trial access to Marquis Who’s Who on the Web — a comprehensive, searchable database of over 1.4 million biographies that is updated daily.

For more information and to access the trial, go to Databases on Trial (Summer 2009)

What is happening?
Starting the morning of Monday June 22nd, we will be installing a new release of the software which runs the QCAT catalogue, circulation and acquisitions system. Because the Queen’s catalogue is so large, we anticipate that the upgrade will require 3 days for complete installation, backup, checking and project sign-off.

How will this affect you?
During the upgrade, the regular QCAT catalogue, as well as all online circulation activities — including book renewal via the web — will be unavailable. (Please note that the Library website and other online services will continue to function normally.)

Alternate arrangements during the upgrade period
A substitute, “bare-bones” web catalogue will be linked to the Library website during the outage so that you can continue to have basic, searchable access to the Library collection. All circulation transactions, however, will have to be performed off-line by library staff at circulation desks.

We apologise for the inconvenience of QCAT and online renewals being unavailable for more than a few hours. The system upgrade is necessary, however, to keep QCAT running effectively and efficiently over the longer term.

Due to an unexpected data error problem, QCAT – the Queen’s library catalogue – is currently unavailable. Every effort is being made to diagnose and repair the problem as quickly as possible but we cannot give an “anticipated up time” at the moment.

We apologise for this inconvenience and ask for your understanding while system engineers do their best to get the catalogue back online as soon as they can.

The Canadian Standards Association has scheduled a system upgrade to their CSA Online Subscription Service (read more about this database).  As a result, the database will be inaccessible starting on Friday April 3rd at 8 pm through to Sunday April 5th at 5 pm.