How Much Time Should Librarians Spend at Professional Meetings?

It is important for all professionals to keep abreast of developments in their respective specialties. We can do that by taking advanced courses or attending professional meetings that can last from one hour to several days. Since information technologies are changing so rapidly, it is especially important for librarians to know what is going on. Time spent at meetings takes us away from our daily responsibilities to our customers. We must always remember that the tuition dollars spent by students pay our salaries.

I am Facebook friends with colleagues at many universities. I have observed that a few of them always seem to be traveling to a meeting or at a conference. I must assume that their supervisors approve of this, but if they spend an excessive amount of time at a meeting, they are letting their daily responsibilities slide. Universities usually pay for their people to attend meetings. Costs for travel, food, and registration, can really add up.

In the past I have gone to one major meeting (for me the American Chemical Society National Meeting) and several short local ones in the course of a year. In the past year I have had to use my own funds for most of it since the travel budget at NJIT has been tight.

I am asking my colleagues who are reading this their opinion on how much time is appropriate for librarians to spend at professional meetings.

Teaching to a class of Chemical Engineering Graduate Students Unscripted

Yesterday I taught ChE 654 - Corrosion. The course description read as follows:

Fundamental principles including thermodynamics and kinetics of corrosion; forms of corrosion (e.g. galvanic, crevice and stress); methods of corrosion measurement; high temperature corrosion; and special case histories.

I decided not to use my standard Powerpoint Presentation that is found linked at http://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/subjectguides/chemistry.php . I told the students that they could use the narrated or non-narrated version of this presentation.

I did cover main points such explaining the peer review process and distinguishing between Scifinder Scholar and Scopus. I also explained how basic information about the corrosion process could be found in textbooks. In this class I explained the significance of cited references and showed how they can be found in the two databases.

I did get training passwords for Scifinder that could be used for one day. I allowed the last half of the session for students to use the database to do their assignment. Some of the questions were:

• Find a Pourbaix diagram for the lead-water system
• Find some information about corrosion in soil
• Find information on who to measure a corrosion current.

Walk Up Reference Question of the Day

The patron had a 2-part question.

1. Is there a way of finding out what physicians are guilty of not paying their bills.

-My thought on this that this is a private matter and would not be in the open literature. The only possibility would be if a supplier wrote on a blog that a physician owed him money.

2. Is there a way I could find out if a physician had been sued for medical malpractice.

-I found this source in the catalog of the UMDNJ Library:

Title:
Questionable doctors disciplined by states or the federal government.
Publisher:
Washington, D.C. : Public Citizen Health Research Group, c1990-

-My second thought was to search the Lexis-Nexis database using the terms medical malpractice and urology and limiting it to New Jersey cases.

The patron could not find the physician in question, but it was possible that there could be a malpractice lawsuit with the doctor under investigation that was settled out of court and did not get into Lexis-Nexis.

Finding Properties of Chemical Substances on the iPhone

I was reading the Chemical and Engineering News of March 22, 2010 and found on page 56 a brief mention of ChemMobi, a free app for the iPhone. This app produced by Symx Technologies and the Royal Society of Chemistry provides access to 30 million chemical structures, molecular formulas, and Material Safety Data Sheets.

I have already placed the link to this on my physical properties page on the NJIT Library web site. I will certainly mention this next time I teach Math 225.

Chat Reference Question of the Day

You never know when a challenging question comes through on QANDANJ. I received this question this morning:

I'm looking for articles on how lay people use the internet to research science topics, and then how they evaluate the online information.

This question was from a student from Rutgers School of Communication and Information. This topic was of interest to me since several years ago I researched the topic of communicating science to the public. It seemed to me that there wouldn't be much written on this.

I searched Academic Search Premier and LISTA, but didn't find anything relevant for the student. The student then added:

My key focus is how lay people use the internet to research controversial topics, in particular nuclear energy and genetically modified foods, but i have had no luck with the specifics. i've widened my search to get something kind of relevant.

Lay people would likely Google to find information on controversial topics. I did find this article which was related to the health sciences:

Title:Evaluation of a Public Library Workshop: Teaching Older Adults How to Search the Internet for Reliable Cancer Information. Authors:Hoffman-Goetz, Laurie1 lhgoetz@uwaterloo.ca Friedman, Daniela B.2 dbfriedm@uwaterloo.ca Celestine, Ann3 acelestine@kpl.org Source:Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet; 2006, Vol. 10 Issue 3, p29-43,

This is how the chat session ended:


Patron:09:34:35 2010/03/23 (GMT-5)
my group and i have had no luck finding anything specific...lots of stuff on health research, but not more controversial scientific issues.

Librarian 1:09:35:36 2010/03/23 (GMT-5)
I went into the LISTA database which is published by EBSCO and searched on "internet searching" and "public" and "sciences" and retrieved 35 items

Patron:09:37:18 2010/03/23 (GMT-5)
ok, thanks for the tip on your search terms. i will keep looking on my own. have a great day!

People can now Register for the Upstate Downstate Science Librarians Meeting on April 26

The theme will be Trends in Sci/Tech and Medical Publishing.

The Panelists will beKris Fitzpatrick – IEEE
Allan Barnett – Institute of Physics Publishing
Elizabeth Perill – Elsevier

Please RSVP to me by e-mail by April 19. I will give the instructions on how to access the web conference on or about April 19. Please feel free to contact me if there any questions. Please re-register if you signed up for the original date in February.

Bruce.Slutsky@njit.edu
973-642-4950

I don't think there has ever been snow in NYC as late as April 26 :)

Cuts in State Funding to New Jersey Academic Libraries will be Disastrous

We received a memo yesterday from Norma Blake, State Librarian, reporting deep cuts in funding to New Jersey Libraries. The details may be found at http://www.web2learning.net/archives/3663

The NJIT library will affected through the loss of funding for Business Source Premier, Academic Search Premier and interlibrary loan services. If the Faculty Library Committee prioritizes those databases, other resosurces will have to be cut. We will soon have a vacancy for a reference librarian. It appears that this position will not be filled in the forseeable future.

Hopefully, these deep budget cuts can be at least partially rescinded.