In the event that any of the services OLS provides is not available—and you’ve not received any specific announcements from OLS or CIS—please check the OLS Systems Status page that, at a glance, will tell you if a service is running or not. There will be cases when a service indicator shows green (available) but from your particular campus or location outside of CUNY the service is unavailable, as a local factor might be the cause. No matter where the outage is experienced, please create a ticket (work order) with the CUNY Service Desk (service.desk@cuny.edu). Always let us know where you are experiencing the problem (i.e., on- or off-campus).

The Office of Library Services (OLS), CUNY’s Office of Computer & Information Services (CIS), and our primary systems vendors monitor and employ (365x24x7) internal alerting mechanisms for critical processes within CUNY Libraries’ ecosystems (Academic Works, Aleph [GUI/OPAC], CORAL, EZproxy, OneSearch, SFX) so, in most cases, we’re already aware of a problem and are working with our partners to restore services.

Please follow these steps when encountering a system or service that appears to be down:

1. Check for announcements/notifications from OLS/CIS via CULIBS-L
2. Check the OLS Systems Status page
3. Create a ticket (work order) with the CUNY Service Desk

If you have never created a support ticket (work order) to report a service interruption/down system, it’s super easy! Just send an email to service.desk@cuny.edu and copy aleph-team@cuny.edu.

NOTE: We require that you copy aleph-team@cuny.edu during system outages!

The subject of your email should contain three parts:

1. The unavailable OLS service/system (e.g., Aleph, Primo, SFX, etc.),
2. Your two-letter OWN code or library name, and
3. A brief summary of your problem.

The body of your message should describe the problem as well as provide a screenshot or the exact text of the error message, if there is one. Please also let us know whether you are on- or off-campus.

Here’s an example:

To: service.desk@cuny.edu
Cc: aleph-team@cuny.edu
Subject: Aleph: LE – Staff (GUI) Clients not Connecting to Server

Service Desk,

We’re unable to connect to Aleph from the Circulation Desk here at Lehman Library. We’re getting a “connection refused” error message. The PC is connecting to the Internet, however, as we’re able to view the library web pages and the Aleph OPAC.

Thank you,
Lenny L.

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