Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Pratt Institute Revisited 2013

From 1979-1982 I worked as a library information scientist at Schering Corporation in Bloomfield, NJ while I pursued a masters degree in library and information science at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.  Today I visited Pratt as I needed to consult with Selenay Aytac, my collaborator on a research project.  She is a librarian at LIU Post, but also teaches as an adjunct at Pratt.

Certainly so much has changed in 31 years.  Schering Corporation no longer exists as it was taken over by Merck a few years ago.  The Brooklyn campus still exists, but the library school moved to a building on 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues.  Certainly the profession has changed so much in that time frame.  Back in 1982 nobody even percieved of the internet.  I think almost everything that I learned back then is now obsolete.  All of the faculty who was there at that time have retired.  We searched Dialog using 300 baud modems.  It was nice to see their facility today.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

The Federal Government Shutdown and Library Services

Tomorrow I will be teaching a class on how to find physical and thermodynamic properties of chemical substances.  One of the resources that I demonstrate is the NIST Webbook.  To my dismay I found out that this site is not working due to the federal government shutdown.  Today a student approached me with an environmental question.  To my surprise the EPA's main website was functioning.

Go figure.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

The Next METRO Science Librarians SIG meeting will be Monday November 4

The next meeting of the METRO Science Librarians SIG will take place on Monday November 4 at 1:30 PM at METRO Headquarters at 57 East 11th Street – 4th floor in Manhattan.  The Program will be:
How to Find Chemical Information from Scifinder and other Sources.  The speaker will be Daniel Reasoner from Chemical Abstracts Service.  This session is suited for science and medical librarians without an educational background in chemistry.
Visit http://metro.org/events/426/ for more information and registration.
For this meeting there will be a nominal $5.00 registration fee that may be paid in advance or at the door.

For further information please contact:
Bruce Slutsky
Bruce.Slutsky@njit.edu