from your science librarian's desk

I haven't forgot about you Mac users (How many do we have here in the Chem. Dept?) …

You all know that there's a Mac OS X version for SciFinder Scholar.  Fairview is a windows terminal server so it does not run Mac applications.  However, there's a Mac solution.  Mac OS X users can install the Microsoft remote desktop application on your mac systems to reach fairview.cofc.edu.  Once you connect to fairview on you Macs, the client software will function just as if you are using it on a windows PC.  To download the Microsoft remote desktop application for Mac OS X, click on the below link.  Once the application is installed on the mac system, the login screen will look very similar to the remote desktop application on the windows system.  Remote Desktop Connection Client 1.0.3 for Mac OS X: 
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/download/misc/rdc_update_103.xml&secid=80&ssid=10&flgnosysreq=True

or a shortened URL: http://tinyurl.com/3vqv7

More clarifications about Fairview:
1.  Fairview access is stable but the IT folks are still evaluating the technology. 
2.  Connections to Fairview are only limited by the number of licenses they have purchased for the terminal server.  At this   time, they do not have enough licenses for general faculty and staff access.  For that reason, they are only giving access to Fairview for specialized applications such as this chemistry database.  
3.  The SciFinder Scholar 2006 client program has been installed on the server, the (chem) faculty don't have to install the client on their end. 

(Again, thanks Admin Comp's Thomas for providing answers to my questions). 

Nobody can imagine how thrilled I was when I tested this at home last night and this morning, the SciFinder Scholar search interface finally came up before my eyes (I can't believe that was real).  So thrilled that I could forget all the frustrations that I encountered during many times of testing and unsuccessful end results, and all the frustrations encountered emailing back and forth various folks at Admin Computing and Acad Computing … …  

Imagine, I embarked upon this ever since I stepped upon this campus, it was not easy, many hurdles encountered, and I started from scratch, from putting the installation files on the library server, then in a password-protected folder (thought one day chem folks would download the client software from off-campus, and then access via VPN); separated from this, also generated the application file for the Mac OS X users to download (on-campus) and use; created various tutorials and guides, gathered many related resource pages, designed the SciFinder Scholar Gateway page http://www.cofc.edu.nuncio.cofc.edu/~library/sfs.html, as a comparison, you can check out the page before I came here: http://www.cofc.edu/~library/scifinder.html. (For all these services and resources, hard work and persistence, I think I derserve some palm clapping, do I?)

But in this post, I do wish to give all my sincere thanks to Admin Computing's Thomas Kascak and Carlos Diaz, it's their tech knowledge and hard work that made this finally happen (Thanks again, Tom and Carlos!); I also wish to thank the new CIO Robert Cape whose powerful email started the closed dialogue all over again. 

Forgive me, I purposedly kept the best for the last, here's a one page tip sheet on How to Access SciFinder Scholar 2006 from Off-Campus (http://www.cofc.edu.nuncio.cofc.edu/~library/scholar/sfs06_offcampus.pdf).