Library Portal Unavailable all day 14.7.08

The Library Portal will be unavailable for the whole day on Monday 14th July 2008 while the application that provides this service is being updated.

This updated Portal should be more stable than the existing version, which has suffered from unexpected disruptions in service this semester.

As a consequence of the updating of the Portal application the searching interface you use will change slightly. The search features you are used to will remain in place but distinguishing between the collections on the different campuses will become more straightforward.

We will also use this opportunity to improve the way in which information about the Library’s e-resources is presented to you. Some of this work will be done when the service is brought back on line. In that initial phase (likely to last a couple of hours) elements of the Library Portal may be re-positioned and modified. I will notify you once this work is complete and the Portal appearance is stable and the service is ready to use.

There will be further service enhancements as a result of the upgrade and I will send out some information about these once we are certain of the details.

We apologise for the disruption to service and for any instability in the service during first semester.

Please send me any comments or questions about this. Staff at any of the six libraries will be able to help you with questions about using the new version of the Portal.

Disruptions to Library Portal Access

As some of you will realise there have been a series of service disruptions affecting the Library Portal over the past week.

These disruptions were caused by the instigation of a measure designed to improve the reliability and performance of the Library Portal.  The core of this was a process to shut down and restart the service at 12.00am each day.  It seems that the service was shutting down properly but not re-starting as expected.

We have received advice from the vendor which provides the Library Portal product and we are confident that the process is now functioning smoothly.

The Library is very conscious of the heavy demand placed on the Portal service and that these disruptions pose a significant problem to customers needing to access resources.  As a result of these service disruptions we are reviewing the way in which we monitor the availability of this service and the measures we take to ensure ongoing access to the Portal both on and off campus.

Accessing the Library Portal

The Library Portal server was upgrade recently and given a new Internet address.

To ensure continued access please replace any book marks or favourites you may have to this site by going to the Library Portal via the Notre Dame homepage and adding the new address to you favourites from there.

Alternatively download the NDA Library Toolbar onto your personal computer for faster access to the databases, journals, catalogue searches, help guides, webmail and more...

Library Portal Temporarily Unavailable

The Library Portal
(catalogue, databases and support pages)
will be temporarily unavailable on
Friday 21st September
from 1pm WST (3pm EST) onwards.

Access to the databases is available via the
Electronic Databases + Journals
library page

If you require assistance
please contact your library