Dear All
To clarify the situation about easylinks and the bids.ac.uk/ ingenta.com
urls that Ian and Lesley raised:
BIDS.ac.uk easylinks will be maintained and we have no plans to change that.
The bids.ac.uk will work for the old journals as well as any new journals we
add to our service. Lesley uncovered a bug with the bids.ac.uk url for a
couple of the new journals which we have fixed that this morning.
The urls containing bids.ac.uk will continue to work, and it is our policy
to continue to support them. If anyone is having problems with them please
let us know ([log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]) -- as far as we know
we have fixed the BIDS easylinks and they are all working fine, and should
continue to do so.
Many apologies for the confusion caused: BIDS is run entirely from the Bath
office, and it was probably up to me to ensure the US help desk were up to
date with how ingenta were handling the new service from the BIDS point of
view -- but I hadn't imagined they would need to know! (BIDS is only UK
based.) I have now followed that up. Lesley was given the wrong information
by the Bath help desk, which is entirely regrettable and was a simple human
error. We work extremely hard to keep everyone on our helpdesk entirely up
to speed with every element of our service, but in this case, one mistake
slipped through, for which we can only apologise.
The second point that Ian raises was seeking clarification on a remark that
Kirsty made about "migrating BIDS users". Kirsty was referring to the
migration of BIDS users who access the ingenta search engine through the
BIDS services page. Currently these users are still seeing the old ingenta
interface. (If you go to www.bids.ac.uk and log in with Athens, the services
page lists ingenta journals as an option -- if you click on this you will be
taken through to a part of the old ingenta service.)
Our original plan was that we would change the BIDS services page at the
same time we launched the new ingenta.com. BIDS would take anyone who came
to the BIDS service page wishing to search the ingenta database through to
the new service. This was announced on BIDS-news at the beginning of last
month. However, in light of the teething trouble we are having with the new
ingenta.com, we decided that it would be better to leave the BIDS users
accessing the old ingenta.com. When we are absolutely satisfied that the new
service is working more than perfectly, we will migrate the interface that
users see when they choose ingenta from the BIDS menu.
I hope that has clarified some points -- if you have any further questions
about BIDS, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me
([log in to unmask]).
All the best
Sam
......................................
Sam Phillips
BIDS Marketing Manager
t: 01225 361024
e: [log in to unmask]
w: www.bids.ac.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list, set up under the auspices of the United
Kingdom Seri [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ian
Winship
Sent: 11 June 2001 11:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: ingenta EasyLink
Like others we are a little confused about the future of EasyLinks.
A query using the Contact form on the ingenta site produced a reply from the
ingenta Helpdesk in the US that the BIDS format
http://www.bids.ac.uk/journals/browse/bpl/acfi?mode=direct
will not be maintained and the ingenta format is needed.
Is this correct - or does the US part of the company not understand BIDS? If
it is correct then what is the timescale?
We would prefer not to have to change the URLs for 2000 titles on our Web
database and the library catalogue.
Kirsty wrote that "We intend to migrate BIDS users to the new service in the
next few months" What does this mean?
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Ian Winship
Learning Resources, University of Northumbria at Newcastle
City Campus Library, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
----------------
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
phone: 0191 227 4150 fax: 0191 227 4563
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