Doug Anderson

Allegheny Strong: A Digital Collection of Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic

If you are a member of the Allegheny community (students, faculty, staff, and alumni), the Allegheny College Archives invites you to share your personal reflections on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted your life and those around you by submitting your creative works to our new digital collection.  Visit our website to learn more about submitting your work or submit directly here. We will accept journal entries, essays, photographs, and videos as well as other digital output documenting your experience during this difficult time.  We envision the project as a way of strengthening our sense of community and human connection while preserving personal accounts of this global event for future generations and scholarly research.  If you have any questions, please contact us at merrick@allegheny.edu.

RefWorks Outage

RefWorks, the reference management service provided to the campus community by LITS, will be out of service temporarily this weekend while its data center is being moved to a new server by ProQuest.

Downtime will start on Saturday, May 9, at 10pm Eastern Time, and will last up to 12 hours. 

If you still experience issues with RefWorks after 10am on Sunday, May 10, please notify the InfoDesk at infodesk@allegheny.edu, or call us at 814-332-3768, or open a Web Help Desk ticket.

Web of Science Citation Counts Restored

Web of Science citation counts have been missing from off-campus AggreGator search results for the past two weeks. The problem can be fixed simply by logging in.  After conducting an initial search in AggreGator, look for a message in the upper right corner of the screen (small white font in a dark grey banner) beginning with the words “Off Campus?” Follow the instructions to log in with your Allegheny Username and Password.  After logging in, the Web of Science citation count will appear in the search results.

Screen shot of banner reading "Off Campus? Log in with your Allegheny Username & Password to access full text."

Classroom Webcams

LITS worked with department chairpersons and building coordinators to identify up to four classrooms per building to equip with webcams to allow for live streaming or recording lectures. In assessing the need the following rooms will be equipped to support live streaming and recording lectures:
  • Alden Hall – 109
  • Arnold Hall – M106
  • Arter Hall – 007, 101, 113, 205
  • Carnegie Hall – 105, 110, 112
  • Carr Hall – 120
  • Doane Hall of Art – ALIC, A103
  • Doane Hall of Chem – 103
  • Montgomery Gym – Performance Space
  • Oddfellows – 105B
  • Quigley Hall – 123
  • Ruter Hall – 201, 203, 109, 106
  • Steffee Hall – B103
  • Vukovich Center – 202

The work of equipping the rooms started on Thursday 3/19 and should be complete by late afternoon on 3/20 to give faculty time to practice the techniques outlined on the Preparing for Remote Course Delivery page of the LITS website. Faculty should work with their building coordinator for scheduling the room.

In the event that additional rooms need equipping, LITS will prioritize that work accordingly. Please direct requests for additional rooms to the InfoDesk.

RefWorks Upgrade

The RefWorks service is scheduled for an upgrade for greater security and scalability. During the upgrade process, the following services will be unavailable:

  • (new) RefWorks
  • RefWorks Citation Manager
  • Write-n-Cite
  • RefWorks for Google Docs

These services will be unavailable starting Saturday March 21, 2020 at 4:00 AM Eastern Time, and for up to 4 hours.

If you experience issues with RefWorks after this time, please open a Web Help Desk ticket or contact the InfoDesk.

ProQuest scheduled maintenance

Dear Valued Customer:

ProQuest will be taking up to a 12-hour maintenance window beginning Saturday, February 8 at 10pm to upgrade infrastructure, enhance security, and maintain reliability on many ProQuest products. During this maintenance window, many ProQuest products provided by Allegheny will be temporarily unavailable, including RefWorks.

If you experience difficulties persisting after 10am on Sunday, February 9, please open a Web Help Desk ticket.

HathiTrust login update

LITS has updated the authentication method for HathiTrust accounts. This may cause some temporary difficulties with logging into your HathiTrust account over the next few days. We expect these difficulties to be resolved by January 20 at the latest.
Most functions of HathiTrust are unaffected.
If you experience difficulties logging into HathiTrust after January 20, please contact the InfoDesk at 814-332-3768, or open a Web Help Desk ticket.

Scheduled Ebook Central Downtime

To ensure our ebook platforms remain updated and secure, ProQuest will be performing maintenance on Ebook Central in October 2019. During this time, resources from this service may be unavailable.

This maintenance will take place Saturday, October 19 from 12:00pm to 3:00pm EDT.

Pelletier Library Winnowing Project

It’s time to review books for Pelletier Library’s winnowing project. Faculty are invited to review titles tagged for possible removal in the call number range 100 to 199, which is primarily focused on Philosophy & Psychology. Click here for a list of topics. The review of titles in 100 – 199 begins 10/11/2019 and lasts until 11/1/2019. Faculty interested in reviewing titles are invited to stop by the InfoDesk to pick up a winnowing envelope.

For more information about the winnowing project, visit https://sites.google.com/allegheny.edu/winnowing.

Pelletier Library Winnowing Project

It’s time to review books for Pelletier Library’s winnowing project. Faculty are invited to review titles tagged for possible removal in the call number range 000 to 099, which is primarily focused on Computer Science. Click here for a list of topics. The review of titles in 000 – 099 begins October 4, 2019 and lasts until October 25, 2019. Faculty interested in reviewing titles are invited to stop by the InfoDesk to pick up a winnowing envelope.

For more information about the winnowing project, visit https://sites.google.com/allegheny.edu/winnowing.