Halloween

For the second year in a row, I wore this mask for Halloween. I startled a few people with it.

Attila the Hun

Although NJIT is a science and engineering school, we still get many reference questions in the humanities. This evening a student needed information about Attila the Hun and the history of that era. Our collection is weak in that area so I also searched the Rutgers catalog limiting the results to the Dana Library. We searched under the subjects Attila, Huns, and Asia, Central-history in both libraries.

Reference Question on QANDANJ

QANDANJ is a statewide chat reference service. I try to monitor the questions from 9 AM - 10 AM from Monday - Thursday. Today I got this question:

What is the life expectancy in the US for both men and women from 1984 to 2004. I need the numbers so I can graph them. I found the information he needed at:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_09.pdf

Chemical Engineering Seminar Today

Today, I attended the chemical engineering department seminar:

Passivation of NanoAluminum for Energetics Applications, Dr. Jason Jouet Naval Surface Wafare Center, Indian Head, MD

Reference Question of the Day

A student was looking for information on how alage can help alleviate global warming. Algae can absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Iron fillings have been added to the oceans to promote gwoth of algae so more carbon dioxide can be sequestered from the atmosphere.

Disclaimer

This journal represents the thoughts of Bruce Slutsky, Technical Reference Librarian at NJIT. It is not a publication of NJIT in any way. I am using this to document my experiences in the library. It is in part an outreach tool hoping to advise students and faculty of the services of the NJIT Library.

Talking about the Mets on the Commute Home

The gentleman in the photo above is Eric Katz, Professor of Philosophy at NJIT. His commute is actually worse than mine since he lives in Bay Shore, Long Island. He takes New Jersey Transit to Penn Station and from there the Long Island Rail Road to his home. Since he is on the teaching faculty he only has to come to NJIT the three days a week that he has to teach. Yesterday I met him on the way home. Most of our conversation was devoted to what the Mets will do in the offseason to improve the team for 2009. He bought a Saturdays plan for Shea Stadium in 2008, but does not know if he will be able to get tickets for Citifield in 2009. It is always nice to be able to talk to someone on the trains. I used to meet Lynn Mullins, the head librarian at Rutgers-Newark, but she retired.

Fruitful Discussions on Public Transportation

It is unusual for me to meet colleagues on the New York City Subway system, but I often meet people on New Jersey Transit more often on the Newark Light Rail, the last leg of my journey to work. Some of the people I meet from time to time are Eric Blitz of University Advancement, Kam Sirkar of Chemical Engineering, Lenny Kaplan of Athletics, and Christine Cervelli of Career Services. For the first time today I encountered Michael Bieber, Professor of Information Systems. We spoke about a project he is working on with the Library and asked me to participate in it. It is important to me that the time I spend commuting is used constructively. Believe me I had done tons of reading over the year on the trains. I am glad to see more NJIT people using public transportation. Each rider is one less car meaning less air pollution and congestion in Newark.

Physics Literacy to the Rescue

For much of the day we now have students working at the reference desk. They can answer the straightforward questions, but are instructed to call us when there is a complicated reference question. I was at a meeting in the faculty commons when I received a phone call that my assistance was needed. The student was looking for information about the public perception and understanding of physics. I first showed him how to find books on the general topic of science literacy. There was nothing specific about physics so we looked in Academic Search Premier and Omnifile and found a few articles specifically on physics literacy. The student was happy with what I found for him.

When I first started at NJIT, President Fenster spoke to the new hires and said it was always more important to talk to our students than it was to talk among ourselves. He compared it to going to a department store and just seeing the employees talk among themselves, while a customer could not get help.

Seminar to Civil Engineering Graduate Students

Today I gave my standard lecture to civil engineering graduate students on how to use the NJIT databases to support their research. I was pleasantly surprised this time that the students were attentive. They were not surfing the webs with laptops or playing with cell phones. I got some very good questions indicating that the students had used these resources before. One student asked about cited references which I usually don't discuss. I was also asked about impact factors which are found in Journal Citation Reports not available at NJIT. There is a world of difference in lecturing to graduate students. The databases have more relevance to their current studies.

Pharmaceutical Chemistry Program at NJIT

A university attempts to attract more students by introducing new programs. Today I had the pleasure of meeting consultant Art Greenberg to discuss the NJIT library's role in this initiative. He was a professor in the chemistry department at NJIT from 1977-89 and is currently the Dean at the University of New Hampshire. I discussed how our library has been historically underfunded as compared to similar institutions. I told him that in recent months I have bought books in pharmaceutical chemistry in anticipation of the program's implementation. Ideally we should get extra money to purchase additional resources. We should also have databases such as Beilstein Crossfile, Knovel, and Merck Index Online

Today's lunch with Sayed

I usually eat lunch at the NJIT cafeteria, but today I decided to do something different. Sayed Hassan (see above) and I decided to go to McGovern's a bar a few blocks away. I just can't drink beer at 12 noon so I had a corned beef sandwich with a coke. It was nice to get away for lunch for a change.

Does anyone at the NJIT Library object to this post?

Reference Questions Today

A graduate student wanted to know if the glass from cathode ray tubes which contains toxic metals was recycled in China and sold to comapnies in the United States.

Another student was interested in the relationships between internships and careers.

I got a call from the architecture library asking for advice on finding information on New York City's Water Tunnel #3

New Address for my personal journal

Please check out http://www.bruceslutsky.com which is my new address for my personal journal. This is what I do when I am not at NJIT.

Will Submit an article to Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship

I am in the process of completing an article titled "Does the Course in Science and Technology Reference Motivate Career Choices?" I just sent a query e-mail to the editor who said she would be interested. I have to write an abstract for the article and then I will ask a couple of colleagues to make some comments before I submit it. I did much of this research over the summer when my workload was less.

Two Meetings Today :(

At 9:00 AM we had a meeting to discuss information literacy. At 10 AM there was a general librarians meeting. I will not say anything more :)

Bill Skawinski - A remarkable man

I ran into Bill Skawinski today during my walk around campus today during lunch. He was waiting for his ride home. I have known Bill since my early days at NJIT in the 1990s. Over the years he has been one of my favorite people on campus. As you can see from the photo, he is a chemist. However, he is blind but his handicap in no way stops him from being and excellent teacher and researcher. Please see this article about Bill from an American Chemical Society site about handicapped chemists. http://membership.acs.org/C/CWD/workchem/edueast.htm#gen86

My 15 minutes of Fame in Biomedical Engineering Class

It is often difficult to convince faculty that it is important that students receive training in the use of the library's databases. The biomedical engineering department has been a challenge for me. Today I was just given 15 minutes to talk to the Fundamentals of Engineering Design class. I just briefly mentioned how basic information on a subject (I chose tissue engineering) for this class can be found in books while more current information must be found in research journals that can be searched through databases such as Scopus, Medline, and the IEEE Electronic Library. I guess a 15 minute mini-lecture to students is better than none at all.

Looking for information on Polymers with Boron

I helped a student today research this question on Scifinder Scholar. The problem was that many of his references talked about polymers in one context and a substance with boron in another context. This is a problem encountered in many electronic searches. He would have to go through his list of reference and carefully evaluate the information retrieved to see if it answered his question.

I announced the next METRO Science Librarians SIG meeting today

Next Meeting: Friday November 7, 2008, 1:30 PM. Please note the change in location for this meeting. I am also ask that people RSVP for this meeting since we need to provide a list of attendees to security at Baruch Location - Baruch College, William and Anita Newman Library, 4th Floor Conference Room, 151 East 25th Street, New York, NY (http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/help/buildingmaps.html )

Topic - Updates on Digital Projects in Science Libraries
Scheduled Speakers:
Ron Jantz - Rutgers University - An Institutional and Architectural Framework for Creating and Preserving Authentic Digital Objects
Mike Luby - National Science Digital Library - Updates to the NSDL

If enough people are interested we can meet at 12 noon for lunch. Please RSVP and indicate if you want to go to the meeting only or if you are interested in going out for lunch.

I would like to thank Jennifer King and Lisa Ellis for arranging for the room at Baruch College.

Please see the SIG’s Wiki.

Cited Reference Searches are starting

We are always asked to do cited reference searches for candidates for promotion and tenure at NJIT. The number of times an author is cited is an indication of the impact of that researcher's work on others. Today I was asked by Dr. Somenath Mitra of the chemistry department to do a search for him. He is applying to become a Distinguished Professor. Although I can not appoint anyone at NJIT to that level, I can help them provide the documentation they need to the committee which makes that recommendation to the Provost. We search Scopus, Web of Science and Scifinder Scholar and report the highest value. The number of cited references is only one factor that the committee uses in making their decision.