The UC Davis Library has announced an online newspaper deal as big as New York — as in The New York Times — for faculty, students, staff, researchers and clinicians on the Davis and Sacramento campuses. With an authenticated UC Davis log-in, you can obtain a free NYTimes Pass for unlimited access to most content.

No more worrying about hitting your monthly limit for access to stories or buying your own subscription, because the library has purchased an academic license — becoming the second UC campus to provide complimentary access to nytimes.com.

The license also provides access to The New York Times in Education, a website of teaching resources curated by discipline.

To claim your NYTimes.com Pass, you’ll need to set up an online account on a computer that is connected to the UC Davis network (including VPN). Here is the three-step process:

• Go to AccessNYT.com.
• Start typing “University of California” in the “Find School” search box; click on “University of California, Davis.”
• Click “Create Account” and complete the form, or, if you have previously registered your email address on The New York Times site, click on “Already have an account? Log in here.”

Once you set up your account, you’ll have access from any computer or other device.

Drum roll, please, for Give Day total!

Development and Alumni Relations recently finished up its bookkeeping for Give Day (held April 20-21 in conjunction with Picnic Day) and announced the grand total: $1.8 million — about $600,000 more than the inaugural Give Day last year.

This year’s day brought in 4,866 gifts (compared with 3,025 a year ago). “We acquired over 1,400 new donors and reactivated about 680, totaling over 2,000 new or lapsed donors joining us,” said Michelle Poesy, senior director, Annual and Special Gifts Program.

“About two-thirds of the donors made their first gifts of the year on Give Day, but a good number made second and third gifts of the year on Give Day,” she said.

SmartSite enters storage, as planned

If you’re looking for SmartSite, it’s no longer there.

As planned, the former UC Davis learning management system went offline, into digital storage, at the end of June. The smartsite.ucdavis.edu URL has been redirected to a Knowledge Base article that explains the change.

If you’re a faculty or staff member who still needs materials from your old sites, you have options.

Information and Educational Technology is copying materials in Resources folders inside old SmartSite sites into zip files available to site owners and instructors. Contact smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu for the zip files.

Also send requests to that address if you, as a faculty or staff member:

• Still need access to materials remaining in your old SmartSite course or project sites, other than what you can get in your zip file(s).
• Need materials from old gradebooks (instructors only). The campus is creating a process for extracting and securely delivering this information for instructors who request it.

Direct all other questions to smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu.

— TechNews

Bus passes cost more; cash fare goes up next

The cost of Unitrans passes went up July 1 and the cash fare will rise with the start of Summer Session II, Monday, Aug. 6. The increases, the first in 14 years, do not affect undergraduates, who pay a quarterly Unitrans fee).

Passes are now priced as follows: 10-ride ticket, $7.50; monthly, $30; quarterly, $77; and annual, $198. The cash fare will go up 25 cents to $1.25.

376 turn out for 1st summer blood drive

The temperature during the June 26-27 blood drive stuck to double digits — with highs of 90 and 84 — but the number of participants hit triple digits: 376 people who gave 319 pints of blood (not everyone who comes out is able to complete the donation process).

“We also had 95 first-timers join us, which is really great,” said Felicia LaMothe, a representative with BloodSource. She added that 16 people joined the Be the Match bone marrow registry.

The bloodmobiles will next be on campus Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 22–23.

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