Early Closing Wed. Nov. 22

President Shirley Ann Jackson announced an early closing for today:

"In the spirit of Thanksgiving, and to have the opportunity to spend additional time with family and friends, Rensselaer will close its offices on the Troy and Hartford campuses at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 22, 2006."

The Cole Library will therefore be closing at 2:00 as well. We will reopen on Saturday, November 25 at 9:00 a.m.

Reminder: EBSCO Electrical System Upgrades on Sunday

EBSCO needs to shut down their computers this Sunday.  During that time, there will be no access to Business Source Premier, PsycINFO, Full Text A-Z, and other EBSCO products.  The Eastern times are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The following is repeated from a previous post of EBSCO's notice on 10/27/2006:

Sunday, 19 November 2006. To perform this final installation, we have no choice but to shut down our computer facilities from 6 a.m. until 1 p.m. CST (12 noon until 7 p.m. GMT).

We know that many end users perform research on weekends, and we apologize for the inconvenience to you and them. We want to give you time to prepare your staff and users for this planned outage on 19 November. Thank you for your patience as we work to improve our service to you.

Thanksgiving Holiday Hours

Thursday, Nov. 23 CLOSED
Friday, Nov. 24 CLOSED
Open normal hours the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the Saturday & Sunday after.

Cole Library Meeting Space

The Cole Library's team meeting rooms are now outfitted with white boards, flipcharts, and markers for your convenience.  Space is first come, first served.

STAT-USA: Merchandise Trade Update

STAT-USA has made a few changes to STAT-USA/Internet and USA Trade Online in an effort to enhance the merchandise trade data available to users.

On the STAT-USA/Internet site, we have added the individual "exhibits" of the U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services FT900 report.

On both services, we've made the Bureau of the Census' cross-classification tables available. This lets you find out what Harmonized System numbers correspond to a given SITC, North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), or End Use code number.

Finally, we've posted the 2007 Calendar of Releases. This lets you know when merchandise trade, as well as all other major economic indicators, will be posted in 2007.

The complete article about these changes is at http://home.stat-usa.gov/statnews.

Applying Pit Stop Techniques to Hospitals

Here's a beautiful example of applying service quality assurance techniques from one "industry" to another totally unrelated one.

New Formula: A Hospital Races To Learn Lessons Of Ferrari Pit Stop; Auto Crew Teaches Surgeons Small Errors Can Add Up On the Track, or in the ICU; Dr. McEwan as 'Lollipop Man' (Rensselaer Hartford login ID required)
Gautam Naik. Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Nov 14, 2006. p. A.1 Provided to Rensselaer Hartford Campus students, faculty, and staff through the Cole Library's ProQuest database. All others, please contact your local library for access to the Wall Street Journal.

Free Engineering Village online training sessions

Ei is pleased to offer complimentary online training sessions. Topical sessions last approximately 30 minutes and are delivered online via Microsoft 'Live Meeting.' All sessions are conducted by Ei Librarian and Training Manager, Gali Halevi, MLS.

November 14th - Introduction to Engineering Village.

November 21st - Increase current awareness using RSS feeds and Blogs

November 28th - University Technology Transfer of Government funded Research

All sessions are offered at 9:30 AM EDT and 2:00 PM EDT. Internet connection and phone required. For further information please visit our support center at www.ei.org

Next Semester's Login

The Hartford login information for Spring, 2007 will be included in the Course Confirmation Letter that you will receive when you register for next semester's courses.  Please keep this information as the login will change on January 1, 2007.  If you have changed your password to something other than the default, it will not be changed.   If you are part of a cohort, you can request the login information from helpdesk@rh.edu. 

ProQuest Maintenance Window - November 10th

Dear ProQuest Customer,

ProQuest will be taking a maintenance window to install infrastructure upgrades ensuring continued reliable performance. The 1-hour maintenance window will take place Friday November 10, 2006 at 22:00 EDT (23:00 UTC/GMT - 1 hrs). See below for a more complete list of times and time zones.

The following products will be unavailable during this window:

• ProQuest®, including ProQuest interface products, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (traditional and graphical K12 interface), American Periodicals Series
• Third-party databases such as PsycINFO® Database with Full Text
• ProQuest Archiver™
• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses

Maintenance window schedule, by time zone:

• EST: Friday November 10, 2006, 22:00 EDT for one (1) hour