Today I gave a seminar to graduate students of chemistry. I always try to vary each presentation I give by emphaszing different resources. There is so much to cover in a short period of time, thus the lecture must be cursory. I spend a little extra time on Knovel since this is a new resource in the NJIT library. I shouwed how it can be used to easily find physical property data of chemical substances. The profesor who coordinates the seminars ask me to discuss predatory journals. He gives an assignment where students must analyze an article from a chemistry journal. He felt that many student chose articles from poor quality journals.
Throughout the lecture, I felt that I was talking to myself as the students did not ask any questions. Is it because:
- They were totally disinterested
- They already knew how to search the chemical literature
- The lecture was cursory as I had to cover so much material, but none in depth
At the very end a student asked if there was a limitation on the number of Scifnder users at a time. I answered that this was no longer true.
I encouraged the students to take some time to access and practice using many of the resources tht I discussed in the lecture. I will never know if they followed up.
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