Posts Tagged ‘software’
Posted on March 8th, 2013 by Paul Stainthorp
After a few glitches, and a lot of work by ICT Services to resolve them, both University of Lincoln corporate Windows desktops are now running the same version of RefWorks’ Write-N-Cite application – version III.
This replaces v.2 of Write-N-Cite which was available on the XP desktop until recently. ICT services and the Library are also working on a plan to upgrade the Cloud Desktop to the newest version of Write-N-Cite (version IV) in the near future.
Now that students & staff can connect to the Cloud Desktop from their own computer or device remotely, they can use Write-N-Cite III from off campus without having to install the software locally.
If you’re used to using Write-N-Cite v.2, you’ll find that there a few differences with version III. In particular:
“…Write-n-Cite III works with one Word document. You can make changes in the document and then click ‘Bibliography’ again. RefWorks will make the changes. Write-n-Cite v.2 works with two versions of the Word document; when you click ’Create Bibliography’ a new Word document that contains the references is made. This new document automatically gets the name Final-(title of original document).”
(Taken from the website of Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam.) There are also differences in the way you use text switches / the Edit Citation feature to modify in-text citations between the two versions.
How to log in to Write-N-Cite:
1. On the Windows XP corporate desktop
- Click on the “Start” menu, then on All Programs > Research Software > Write-N-Cite.
- Click on “Athens users” to begin the login process.
2. On the Cloud Desktop
- Click on the Windows icon, then on Research Software > Write-N-Cite.
- Click on “Athens users” to begin the login process.
3. Alternatively, you can download Write-N-Cite IV to your own computer
To download Write-N-Cite IV:
- Log in to RefWorks via the Library website;
- Go to Tools > Write-N-Cite;
- Download and install the appropriate version (Windows/Mac) of Write-N-Cite IV;
- Copy-and-paste the Write-N-Cite Login Code – you will need this to access Write-N-Cite once it is installed;
- There is a help guide for working with Write-N-Cite on the RefWorks website.
ICT services and the Library are working on a plan to upgrade the Cloud Desktop to Write-N-Cite IV in the near future.
If you have any questions or problems with Write-N-Cite, please email: RefWorks@lincoln.ac.uk
Tags: cloud desktop, corporate desktop, differences, ICT Services, III, IV, MS Word, off campus, on campus, reference management, referencing, RefWorks, software, Windows 7, Windows XP, WnC, Write-N-Cite
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Posted on November 5th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp
The University of Lincoln’s Cloud Desktop PCs on the upper floors of the University Library now provide access to Write-N-Cite III for RefWorks.
To access Write-N-Cite on a Cloud Desktop PC:
- Click on the Windows “Start” icon, then on “All Programs”.
- Click on the “Research” folder, then on “Write-N-Cite“.
- The Write-N-Cite application will open, along with Microsoft Word 2010. To log in to Write-N-Cite, ignore the “Group Code” box and click on the link marked “Athens users“.
- If this is the first time you have used Write-N-Cite on a Cloud Desktop PC, you may need to kick-start the Athens login process. To do this, first click on “Alternative login“… then, from the “Find your organisation” screen, click on “University of Lincoln“.
- Finally, click on “Go to the University of Lincoln login page” and you will be able to access your RefWorks references within Write-N-Cite, add citations to Word documents, and generate bibliographies. N.B. before you can generate a bibliography, you’ll need to save the Word document you’re working on.
- Some links to further information:
- There’s a guide to using the Cloud Desktop on the ICT Support Desk website.
- Write-N-Cite III has its own help guide available through the RefWorks website.
- If you want to download Write-N-Cite III for use on your own computer, there are instructions for doing so here.
- Please email RefWorks@lincoln.ac.uk if you have any questions!
Tags: Athens, citation, cloud desktop, GCW University Library, Group Code, III, login, MS Word, reference management, RefWorks, software, Write-N-Cite
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Posted on October 8th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp
We occasionally get enquiries from students who are trying to register for student discounts on shopping websites, and who are being directed to log in using their institutional credentials (often “Athens“, as we use OpenAthens as a gateway to authentication via the UK Access Management Federation) and/or provide a University email address.
There’s a list of such sites at the bottom of this blog post. I’ll add to the list if and when I find out about others.
If a student at the University of Lincoln is presented with a generic “Athens” login on one of these student discount websites (and unless they already have an Athens cookie on their computer from a previous e-resources session), they will have to click on “Alternative login” before they can be directed to the correct University of Lincoln login point. (See these instructions for an idea of how to follow this alternative login option.)
These sites are frankly a source of annoyance to the Library.
We rarely know about them in advance; they cause confusion to students, who often require help logging in; and they tie up staff time on the helpdesk and over the phone trying to guide students through a login process on a website that we’ve never seen. Presumably some of the companies are listed on the UK Access Management Federation website, but I don’t know how we might identify them all, or whether we can get notified about new ones.
Here’s a list of student discount websites that use some kind of institutional login to authenticate the student:
- Adept Scientific - Adept4Education (edustore.adeptscience.co.uk) Bibliography Software Data Analysis & Visualisation, Laboratory Applications, Mathematics and Simulation – this is slightly different in that it uses ‘traditional’ direct Athens authentication, rather than OpenAthens as a gateway to federated access.
- Microsoft store (www.microsoft.com/student/en-gb/Deals/default.aspx) – deals on Microsoft Office University 2010, Office for Mac University 2011, Windows 7 Professional Upgrade.
- Microsoft Dreamspark (www.dreamspark.com) – free specialist developer and designer software, including Visual Studio, XNA Game Studio, etc.
- A number of companies that use the UNiDAYS (www.myunidays.com) student discounts portal:
Tags: Adept Scientific, Adept4Education, Alternative login, Athens, authentication, Boohoo, deals, discount, DreamSpark, Microsoft, MS Office 2010, OpenAthens, software, student discount, students, Topshop, UK Federation, UNiDAYS, Waterstones, Windows 7
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Posted on January 18th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp
Following on from the final push to get everyone* using the new version of RefWorks, the people at RefWorks-COS are now working on upgrading the associated desktop/word processor application, Write-N-Cite. RefWorks say they are “very close” to releasing the new version of Write-N-Cite for Windows, and have today launched a series of introductory webinars (web-based training sessions) to prepare people for the change.
You can sign up for a webinar via RefWorks’ website.
“The full release version of Write-N-Cite will run on Word for Windows 2007 & 2010 as well as Word for Mac 2008 & 2011. […] Key improvements of the new Write-N-Cite:
• Auto formatting while you write
• Seamless online/offline access to your references
• Professional citation and bibliography customization tools
• Auto managed footnote styles”
*N.B. at the time of writing, it’s still possible to switch back to the ‘Classic’ version of RefWorks, using a link in the top right-hand corner of your RefWorks account. RefWorks-COS did threaten that this option would be removed for good, early in 2012, so don’t expect it to be there for much longer!
Tags: RefWorks, software, upgrade, webinars, Write-N-Cite
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Posted on September 14th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp
I don’t think I’ve blogged these instructions before: how current University of Lincoln students can register for and download Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2010 for ‘only’ £49.99 under the Microsoft Ultimate Steal offer.
N.B. This offer is available for current UK students only – i.e. only students with an .ac.uk email address. (There’s a separate deal on the same software for University of Lincoln staff.)
How to do it:
- Go to the Microsoft Ultimate Steal page at: http://www.microsoft.com/student/office/en-gb/default.aspx (or access it via the University IT offers page at: lncn.eu/ghj)
- Click the ‘Buy Now’ button. Then, enter your University of Lincoln student email address, in the format: accountID@students.lincoln.ac.uk (for example: 11987654@students.lincoln.ac.uk).
- You will be sent an email to your student email account, from ‘studentoffice.uk@digitalriver.com’, headed ‘Microsoft Program Confirmation’. (You can log in to access your student email at email.lincoln.ac.uk, using your University of Lincoln accountID and password.) Click on the link contained in the email. You should be automatically logged in to the Microsoft store.
- Click ‘Buy Now’ again. You’ll be taken to the ‘Shopping Basket’ page, which will display details of the MS Office package (for £49.99), plus a physical backup disk for an additional £10.00 – although you can delete this from the shopping basket if you don’t want it, by clicking on the little ‘bin’ icon.
- Click on the ‘Checkout’ button, fill in your credit/debit card and address details, and you’ll receive one licence key for Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2010.
Tags: deals, download, email, ICT Services, Microsoft, MS Office 2010, offers, software, Ultimate Steal
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Posted on July 8th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp
Just a note to record that we have now almost completed a project to purchase Axiell Calm as the University of Lincoln Library’s new archives & special collections management software.
Calm is the leading archives system in the UK, is widely used by public archives and museums as well as by universities, and is compliant with the acronym soup of standards in archive management (EAD; ISAD (G); ISAAR (CPF); NCA, anybody?) We’ve also bought into CalmView, which will provide a decent public web front-end to our special collections.
What special collections? Well, there’s the Pilger Archive for starters. Other potential collections at the University (including the Lincolnshire Echo archives and the diaries of Fu Bingchang) haven’t been developed because the Library needed first to develop an infrastructure and expertise in dealing with special collections, but found it hard to do so without a special collection to justify investment: a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation! – hence the purchase of Calm.
Lincolnshire County Council already use Calm to manage the county archives, and have a significant amount of expertise with it. I hope that through our contacts with the county library & archives service (via LISN and elsewhere), we’ll be able to share in their expertise and, potentially, collaborate on future archival projects.
And because Calm provides an OAI-PMH endpoint, we’ll be able to suck our special collections straight into Jerome, just as we’ve already done with our Repository via the same protocol.
Tags: archives, Axiell, Calm, DAM, Jerome, Pilger Archive, software, special collections
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Posted on June 18th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp
At our Library Innovation Group (LIG) meeting this coming Monday (20 June), we’re going to be taking a fresh look at how we support the use of online reading lists in the University of Lincoln.
At the moment, we use a reading list product called LearnBuild LibraryLink, which integrates nicely with our Blackboard VLE and allows subject librarians to keep on top of multiple lists. However, it’s fair to say it’s not always the easiest software to use. Here are my instructions on maintaining reading lists in LibraryLink [PDF].
When I gave a presentation about our experiences of using reading list software at the second ‘Innovations in Reference Management‘ event last year (#irm10), Owen Stephens the event organiser liveblogged our situation quite nicely:
Paul reflecting that Lincoln only partially successful in implementing ‘reading lists’.
University of Lincoln – bought reading list system, funds were only available for short period, so had limited time to assess full requirements and how far chosen product met their requirements.
Successes:
- filled a void
- improved consistency
- gave library an ‘in’ on launch of new VLE (Blackboard)
- hundreds of modules linked in by 2000
- students are using them – have usage stats from both LearnBuild and Blackboard
- some simple stock-demand prediction
Unfortunately there were quite a few areas not so successful:
- not intuitive; time-consuming
- software not being developed
- no community of users
- competing developements (EPrints, digitisation, OPAC, RefWorks)
- too closely linked to Blackboard module system
- Subject libraries don’t like it, but lack of uptake from academics means that it is the subject librarians who end up doing the work.
However, unless library can demonstrate success, unlikely to get money to buy better system… So library putting more effort into make it work.
So: on Monday, I’m hoping to kick off a discussion by giving a quick run-through of the various online reading list management options available to UK Higher Education libraries. These screenshot slides (which are a visual aid / aide mémoire rather than a proper presentation) list the various products and approaches to reading list management. Some are commercial software projects; others are Open Source projects; still others are being developed in-house at various universities (and are not necessarily available for the University of Lincoln to use – e.g. the University of Huddersfield’s MyReading Project); there are a couple of wildcard solutions in there too.
Here are the slides:
Tags: #irm10, ASLs, Blackboard, LearnBuild, LibraryLink, LIG, MyReading, open source, options, Owen Stephens, presentations, reading lists, reference management, slides, slideshare, software, TELSTAR, University of Huddersfield, visual aids
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Posted on May 9th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp
The University of Lincoln are advertising for a subject librarian with a web services / mashup flavour.
Excerpts from the job description:
“To provide effective support for and work closely with the Lincoln School of Computer Science and the School of Engineering”
“Take responsibility for developing and maintaining the Library’s web presence”
“Provide support for students using specialist software”
“Experience of manipulating data through web services and APIs”
“Good knowledge of HTML and XML”
See the full job description (pdf). The University has an online applications system. Closing date is 23 May 2011.
Tags: APIs, ASL, computing, engineering, HTML, job description, jobs, mashups, software, subject librarian, vacancies, web services, website, XML
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Posted on April 21st, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp
Did you know that Google Chrome is available to install on the corporate Windows desktop at the University of Lincoln, as an alternative to Microsoft/Windows Internet Explorer 7? I didn’t, until yesterday, but now I’ve just found out how to install it:
- Go to the Start menu and select the Control Panel;
- Double-click on Add or Remove Programs;
- When the ‘Add or Remove Programs’ window appears, select Add New Programs;
- Scroll down the alphabetical list until you see Google Chrome 10.0. Select it, and click on Add.
Once it’s been installed (which will take a minute), you should be able to find it in the Start menu, under All Programs > Google Chrome. You can create a shortcut by draging the icon to your desktop if you want.
N.B. unfortunately the way Chrome has been deployed means that it “doesn’t support Roaming Profiles properly and instead stores all user data in the Local Settings on the PC. This means bookmarks and other preferences will not follow users if they move between different PCs”.
~~~
A version of Mozilla Firefox is also available on the corporate desktop: supplied “as an experimental trial” by ICT services, it uses a VMware ‘thin’/virtual application, so that you don’t have to physically install it on your computer: instead the application is delivered over the network every time you use it.
You can find it at P:\Firefox. The version available here is version 3 of Firefox; I don’t know if there are any plans to upgrade this to the current version. You can create a shortcut by draging the icon from the P: drive to your desktop.
Tags: alternative, browser, Chrome, corporate desktop, Firefox, Google, IE7, install, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mozilla, software, thinware, virtual application, Windows
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Posted on April 19th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp
“Item pages sport COinS metadata“, we blithely announced earlier this week. In reality this is a great leap in the right direction for Jerome. It’s a perfect example of one of the ways we’re processing and [re-]presenting the bibliographic data that Jerome sucks in, making it machine readable via a really cool web interface, and enhancing the end-user experience as a result.
COinS, in case you’re suffering from Friday Afternoon Acronym Desensitivity Syndrome (FAADS), stands for “Context Objects in Spans“, don’tchaknow. It’s a way of embedding bibliographic metadata about a resource—often the data needed to meet the OpenURL standard—directly into the HTML tags of a web page about that same resource.
Give it a go with your favourite bibliographic reference management software. I used Zotero to grab the details of a random book record in Jerome:
And compared it to how Zotero handles the same book record presented in the University of Lincoln’s native library catalogue (SirsiDynix HiP). See the table below. HiP actually works very well with Zotero (I don’t think it uses COinS, though), capturing 14 of 17 potentially useful data fields. Jerome is less impressive (alpha release, remember!) at the moment, capturing 8 of the same 17. But it’s a bloody good start, contains all of the essential referenceable fields, and you’ll be able to watch the score even out as Jerome’s record enrichment kicks in, and as we tweak the site.
|
Jerome |
Horizon Information Portal |
| Item Type |
✓ |
✓ |
| Title |
✓ |
✓ |
| Abstract |
✗ |
✗ |
| Subtitle |
✗ |
✓ |
| Author |
✓ |
✓ |
| Edition |
✓ |
✓ |
| Place [of publication] |
✓ |
✓ |
| Publisher |
✓ |
✓ |
| Date |
✓ |
✓ |
| # of Pages |
✗ |
✓ |
| Language |
✗ |
✗ |
| ISBN |
✓ |
✓ |
| Library Catalog [sic.] |
✗ |
✓ |
| Call Number |
✗ |
✓ |
| Rights |
✗ |
✗ |
| Tags |
✗ |
✓ |
| Original Record |
✗ |
✓ |
| Score |
8/17 |
14/17 |
Tags: book, COinS, embedded, HiP, Horizon Information Portal, metadata, OpenURL, reference management, score, software, Zotero
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