SOLO maintenance: 12-15 August 2016

Posted on 10 August 2016 by smiths

SOLO will be undergoing essential maintenance from 5pm Friday 12^th August to 9am Monday 15^th August 2016. SOLO will still be available but will have limited functionality:

Find & Request tab (location information) will not display.
Viewing and renewing loans will not be possible.
Placing requests will not be possible.
Self-issue machine will not work.

Access to e-resources will be unaffected; readers will still be able to view ebooks and online journal articles.

To search for books and journals held in Oxford, use COPAC – though bear in mind that it will not display the up-to-date status of a book, e.g. when it is due back from loan.

Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused. Do contact library staff if you need any help.

SOLO maintenance: 8-11 April

Posted on 7 April 2016 by smiths

SOLO will be undergoing essential maintenance from 5pm Friday 8^th April to 9am Monday 11^th April. SOLO will still be available but will have limited functionality:

Find & Request tab (location information) will not display.
Viewing and renewing loans will not be possible.
Placing requests will not be possible.
Self-issue machine will not work.

Access to e-resources will be unaffected; readers will still be able to view ebooks and online journal articles.

Finding Brill Open Access monographs in SOLO: tips

Posted on 10 November 2015 by iholowaty

As more and more monographs also become Open Access, our colleagues in the Bodleian Library are cataloguing those so they can be found and accessed via SOLO.

For instance, if you wanted to find Brill Open Access monographs in SOLO, then simply search for:

“brill online books and journals” “open access”

You can then use the facets on the side to explore which subjects are covered.

Look out for more Open Access monographs. They are freely available and, now that they are integrated into SOLO, should also be discoverable in addition to our purchased and Legal Deposit collections.

SOLO upgrade 14 July: new features & improvements

Posted on 14 July 2015 by iholowaty

SOLO was upgraded this morning. Some highlights of the changes include:

1. Online access indicators – prominent green dots show where we have the item online and also notes the existence of physical copies. electronic Legal Deposit items display an orange dot.

2. Info buttons in Find & Request tab – these currently link to the library information pages at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/subjects-and-libraries/libraries3. Browse related titles – any book records with a Library of Congress or National Library of Medicine classification field will show results with pictures of book covers underneath. This allows readers to scroll through books with adjacent classification numbers.

Other features include:

Boolean operators now available in advanced search interface to help build complex queries
Holdings information display improvements for items with multiple lines. If you click on “More holdings information” there is this pop-up:

Permalink – a stable url is now provided more prominently, giving you a quick way to copy the link to a particular result in SOLO to send to a reader or refer to in a guide/reading list. The previous ‘link to this record’ links are no longer visible although they will still work.

Improvements have also been continuing apace between upgrades. You may have already noticed that:

if you try leaving an open SOLO session unused for a while (up to 30 minutes, which is the official timeout period), you should now be able to continue with the same session.
the Search Everything tab is now better at intermingling results from the other two tabs (Oxford Collections and Articles & More)
searching for Chinese and Japanese materials are much improved
Hebrew alternative spellings are now included in searches

Do you know where to find past History UG thesis?

Posted on 30 January 2015 by iholowaty

Are you preparing to write your UG history thesis? A selection of past Oxford undergraduate history theses are held in the Upper Camera Office where you can request to view them.

Search “Final Honour School of Modern History: undergraduate thesis” in SOLO.

Trinity Term training opportunities for 2nd year historians: book your places now!

Posted on 28 April 2014 by ljones

Working on your thesis? Do you have right research and information skills? Do you need to brush up your Français?

Second year undergraduate historians currently working towards their theses are encouraged to attend newly announced training sessions for Trinity Term. They will provide you with valuable information and support sure to stand you in good stead for your research.

The programme on offer aims to help you with locating and utilising a variety of source materials, whilst equipping you with knowledge on some of the key research tools available. Workshops scheduled include:

Aside from highlighting some of the key resources available locally, these sessions will also provide opportunities for refreshing and upgrading information searching skills. There will be chances to explore databases, e-journals and web portals, along with advanced searches in SOLO and the benefits of using RefWorks to manage your citations during dissertation research. Staff will be on hand to provide step-by-step demonstrations, with opportunities for putting theory into practice also provided.

For further details on these workshops, along with booking information, please visit the HFL website.

Can’t come to a course?

The handouts and slides of sessions will be made available on HFL WebLearn > Guides & presentations.

Need specialist help?

Isabel Holowaty, Bodleian History Librarian is happy to discuss what sources and literature searching tools are best suited to anybody studying British and Western European history. Email her at isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk to arrange a 1:1.

If you are studying history outside Britain and West Europe, find your subject specialist here.

Do you have the right language skills?

The Language Centre has a lot to offer for historians wishing to upgrade their language skills or, quite simply, start learning a language. More on this.

SOLO upgrade tomorrow (3 Sept): browse, date range search

Posted on 2 September 2013 by iholowaty

SOLO Upgrade: Tuesday 3^rd September

The software that powers SOLO, the Bodleian Libraries’ online catalogue, will be upgraded tomorrow. While SOLO will function the same following the upgrade, the new version of the software brings with it various additional new features, many of which have been requested by readers.

1. Browse searching

The new browse search allows users to browse records using A-Z lists of authors, titles or subjects. The browse lists cover the holdings of the majority of libraries within the University, but they do not include the databases indexed in OxLIP+ or research papers and theses indexed in the Oxford Research Archive (ORA). You can browse OxLIP+ or ORA within their own dedicated search interfaces.

2. Date range search (Advanced search)

This is a new option in the advanced search screen which allows users to limit searches by specifying a publication date range. Results from the search will only include material where the publication date falls between the start and end date set.

3. Improved export options

The facility to export records to reference managers has been greatly improved in this new version of SOLO. It is now possible to export directly from individual records without saving to e-shelf and to export to desktop reference management software such as Endnote and RefWorks.

It is now possible to refine your results using more than one option in the facet list on the left-hand side of the page. To do so, click on ‘refine further’. This will also offer the option to exclude facets.

4. Multiple selection/exclusion of facets (Refine your results)

Please note: Readers using the “Libraries” facet are strongly advised to avoid excluding libraries. This is because if an item is held in a number of libraries and you choose to exclude one of them, you will not see the item at all, even though it is also available in other libraries that you have chosen to include. For example, if you exclude the Bodleian, you will not see items in other libraries if they are also held in the Bodleian. To refine your search by library you are advised to use the “include” option but not “exclude”.

We continue to work to develop and improve SOLO, and welcome comments via the feedback link on the SOLO front page. For help and guidance using SOLO, please see the SOLO online guide or ask library staff. The Bodleian Libraries Live Help service is also available on the SOLO front page from 9am-5pm on weekdays.

SOLO down for software upgrade 3 August 8am to 5 August 9am

Posted on 1 August 2013 by iholowaty

A significant upgrade of the underlying library software (from which SOLO takes much of its content and data relating to item availability etc) means SOLO will be unavailable between 8am on Saturday 3rd August and 9am on Monday 5th August.

How do I find out what is held in Oxford during this downtime?

To search for books and journals held in Oxford, use COPAC – though bear in mind that it will not display the up-to-date status of a book, e.g. when it is due back from loan.

Can I still renew books or place holds online?

No, unfortunately during this time patron functions are not available. Please contact the owning library if you need help. For enquiries relating to HFL books, contact HFL staff.

Can I still access databases and ejournals?

Yes, you can still access our database and ejournal subscriptions via OxLIP+.

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

Problems with library logins now resolved

Posted on 25 April 2013 by iholowaty

The problems encountered by some readers trying to access the My Account area on SOLO and log in to the Bodleian Libraries wifi network have now been resolved.

If any readers are still having problems logging into services using their library card details please contact us.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this technical issue.

Electronic Legal Deposit started 6 April: learn how to find electronic items in SOLO and use them

Posted on 8 April 2013 by iholowaty

At midnight on 5/6 April 2013, new legislation came into force allowing the Bodleian Libraries and the other Legal Deposit Libraries in the UK and Ireland, to access electronic books, articles, web pages and other electronic documents published in the UK. This is the electronic equivalent of print legal deposit, the legislation which has allowed the Bodleian Libraries to receive a copy of every item published in print in the UK since 1662. Bodleian Libraries will be referring to this new material as Electronic Legal Deposit (eLD).

Watch this SOLO Video Guide for an overview of the regulations governing the use of electronic Legal Deposit materials and guidance on how to access them using SOLO.

Coverage

The new eLD legislation covers:

E-journals, e-books and other electronic documents published in the UK
Web pages published in the UK
Stand alone or “off line” electronic items such as CD-ROMs

The legislation does not cover:

Social media web sites e.g. Facebook
Web sites and other materials which solely consist of audio/visual content (for example YouTube). However, where audio or video clips are embedded within, for example a normal web page, it will be covered. A good example of this is videos embedded in news items on the BBC web site.

Restrictions in use

Access to eLD items is subject to the following restrictions which are imposed by the Legal Deposit Act 2003:

eLD items may only be accessed from the premises of the Legal Deposit Libraries. In Oxford this means that you will only be able to access eLD items from within the 30 Bodleian Libraries. You will not be able to access them from College Libraries or other University premises outside of the Bodleian Libraries. In addition, unlike our other e-resources, you will not be able to gain outside access even if you are using your Oxford Single Sign on (SSO) or VPN
eLD items may only be accessed from Library computers in the Bodleian Libraries. You will therefore need to use one of the Libraries’ public workstations rather than your own laptop or device.
Each item on eLD may only be viewed by one person in the Bodleian Libraries at a time. If someone is already using the eLD item that you want, you will need to come back later.
You may not make digital copies or save eLD items – even within normal copyright limits
You may not copy and paste from eLD items

In addition to these legal restrictions, due to technical issues in the Bodleian Libraries you will only be able to access eLD items from the Mozilla Firefox browser. You will not be able to access them from Internet Explorer.

How to find eLD material in SOLO

You will be able to find and access articles and books deposited via eLD using SOLO. The SOLO search screen now has four search tabs, two of which can be used to search Electronic Legal Deposit.

More details and help

More details, how to use SOLO to include and exclude eLD materials, and for information about further support, check out the Bodleian Libraries eLD guide.

Bodleian History Faculty Library at Oxford

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Tag Archives: SOLO