Changed the Layout of the Journal

Since I had some time over the break, I changed the style of this web site. I hope that readers of this journal enjoy the change. If not, please let me know. I added the ESPN widget to my personal journal .

NJIT is closed until January 5th

One of the advantages of working at NJIT is time off. The union contract allows the university to be closed from December 25th until January 1. This year the administration is giving us off Christmas Eve and Friday January 2nd. There would be few people around those days, and the university would have to heat the buildings, so they are giving us two extra days off.

My best wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season and new year for readers of this journal and my personal journal.

I will not add new entries until NJIT reopens on January 5.

Assessment of Information Literacy Skill Using Writing Portfolios

Let me repeat my disclaimer that opinion here are my own and do not reflect those of NJIT or the management of the NJIT Library.





There has been much done in the area of information literacy defined as is the ability to recognize the extent and nature of an information need, then to locate, evaluate, and effectively use the needed information. Countless hours have been spent by librarians teaching students how to effectively use information resources available to them. Much research is done on how to assess information literacy skills of students. Let me describe the activities at NJIT as outlined in this paper by several my NJIT colleagues.





Direct Assessment of Information literacy using Writing Portfolios. By: Scharf, Davida; Elliot, Norbert; Huey, Heather A.; Briller, Vladimir; Joshi, Kamal. Journal of Academic Librarianship, Jul2007, Vol. 33 Issue 4, p462-477, 16p, 2 charts, 2 diagrams;



This Fall semester we taught every student of Humanities 101 3 lectures on how to use the information resources of the library. They were required to come outside of class. The students were required to maintain a portfolio of their writings for this course. After the class, the librarians examined the research paper to evaluate the students' information literacy skills. The five criteria that were evaluated:



1. Citation - the contents of the portfolio demonstrate that the students has cited sources so that the original source can be easily found.



2. Evidence of Independent Research - the portfolio includes evidence of research independent of sourcesindicated within the course syllabus



3. Appropriateness - the sources in this portfolio are apropriate to the topic the student addressed.



4. Integration - the sources cited in the portfolio have informed the course work. The researched work will demonstrate that the student has incorporated information in order to deepen critical thought.



5. Overall information literacy portfolio score. The contents of the portfolio demonstrate that the student has employed an information literacy framework.

For each of these 5 criterion the information literacy assessment skills are:

Very Strongly agree

Strongly Agree

Agree

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

Very Strongly Disagree

The portfolios are evaluated after the grades for the course have been submitted. At this point the scores evaluate the program. There are a few concerns of mine:

The evaluations are very subjective and often varied greatly between two librarians who graded the respective portfolios.

The students do not get feedback on their information literacy assessment. The standards for students in this freshman writing course should not be as high as those for upper classmen or graduate students. By not getting feedback on their portfolio assessment, student can not learn from their mistakes. They must know not to find all their information by searching Google. When searching a database, they must know not to just take the first retrieved reference that looks relevant. They must take the time to evaluate many retrieed references and pick the best ones that are appropriate for their paper.

I think it is also important for librarians not to impose themselves on students. We are there to help them, but not to overwhelm with minutiae that they will never need. We are not training our students to become librarians. We want them to know when and how to integrate information resources into their professional and personal lives.

NJIT University Wide Holiday Party

I attended my 17th university wide holiday party. I remember that years ago it was so crowded in the old Wilson Alumni Center. Now it is held in the Hazell Ballroom of the Campus Center. The tables with food were outside while the seating area was inside the ballroom. There was even a large dance floor. There was a bigger variety of food this year.

NJIT Library Holiday Party

Today most of the NJIT Library drove out to the Manor in West Orange for our annual holiday party. We had been there in the past for several retirement luncheons, but this was outr first holiday party there. In some years, we had the party in the library conference room, while other years we went to local restaurants. The food was excellent, while everyone enjoyed themselves. It was nice to get away from the office for a few hours.

Passing of Val Metanomski

I was informed today of the passing of Val Metanomski of Chemical Abstracts Service. I had the pleasure of knowing Val through the American Chemical Society Division of Chemical Information. He was always very friendly to me when we met at national meeting of the society. As the archivist of the division he wrote "50 years of Chemical Information in the American Chemical Society 1943-1993". This volume documents my activities in the Division as a committee chair and a symposium organizer before 1993. Val will certainly be missed by all his professional colleagues. My condolences to the family.

A Celebration of the Life of Professor Dana Knox

In my journal entry of September 24, 2008 I reported the untimely passing of Dana Knox, Associate Provost and Professor of Chemical Engineering at NJIT. Today there was a celebration of his life at the Campus Center Atrium. There were moving speeches by Reginald Tomkins, Reobert Altenkirch, Priscilla Nelson, Joel Bloom, Rose Federici, Isabel Bracero, Robert Barat, Lisa Kardos, Kathy Kelly, David Ullman, Richard Sweeney, and John Federici.

We just created an area for the collection of Dana's chemical engineering books that were donated to the library. There is also a plaque that will be mounted in the library at a future date to recall his contributions to the university.

Reference Question of the Day

A student needed two papers discussing metabolism of anti-cancer drugs. We tried both Scifinder Scholar and Scopus using the search strategy drug metabolism and antineoplastic. We found references in both databases. The problem was finding articles that we had access at NJIT.

H Index - the hot topic of the week

This week I have received questions from 3 faculty about the H index, a concept that was first postulated in 2005 as a way of measuring the impact of a scientist through his/her publications. There is a good article in the Wikipedia that summarizes the H index. I was able to find the H index for these 3 professors using Scopus and the Web of Science. The latter gave a higher value since it covers older publications.

NJIT lost to St. Johns 82-54 in basketball

From 1990-92 I worked at the library at St. John's University in Queens. Just now St. John's beat NJIT 82-54 in men's basketball. I just heard part of the game on WBBR radio. The NJIT Highlanders have now lost 41 games in a row. I will not offer an opinion here. I am just stating the facts.

Cited References Searches for Faculty

The library is asked to do cited reference searches for faculty members applying for promotion or tenure. The number of cited references is an indication of how one researcher's work impacts on others in their respective specialty. There is an assumption that more cited references are a better gauge of the quality of the research. This maybe true, but there are certain some caveats. For example in the 1980s Fleischman and Pons wrote a paper on cold fusion, but their theory was really shot down. In this case a high number of cited references did not indicate quality. There could also be a controversial paper that receives many cited references from people expressing opinions on both sides of the issue. For example touch therapy in nursing is debatable, and a paper on that topic would yield researchers supporting both sides of the issue.

We search Scopus and the Web of Science to determine the number of cited references for each candidate. We also search Scifinder Scholar if the specialty is in a chemical related area. Since each of these databases has different journal coverage, we report the highest number. We do not use Google Scholar since that database included non-refereed papers. Some people fight tooth and nail for every cited reference they can get.

The Promotion and Tenure committee obviously uses many factors when evaluating candidates. They look at the quality of the journals which are often determined through the impact factor. There is always the "political factor."

Free Structure Drawing Programs for Chemists

Professional listservs are often a nuisance. A subscriber can receive umpteen e-mails a day from members of that listserve. Very often someone will start a thread and everyone and his brother has to get his two cents in about the subject. I subscribe to chminf-l, a virtual community of chemical information specialists. I know many of the people from the American Chemical Society Division of Chemical Information. Today there was a post from Symyx Technologies offering a free structure drawing program for academics. I downloaded it myself and passed the information along to my chemistry colleagues at NJIT.

Information Literacy Courses for Credit in New Jersey

I found out that the following colleges in NJ offer for credit courses in information literacy:

• Brookdale Community College
• Mercer County College
• Union College

All 3 are two year institutions.

NJIT Basketball Team Loses to Stony Brook 60-39

They are now 0-6 on the season and have now lost 39 in a row. No further comment.

Looking for an Expert on Colloids in Pharmaceuticals

Yesterday afternoon I attended a seminar given by Professor Raj Dave of the chemical engineering department who summarized his research about nanoparticles. At the end of the seminar Reg Tomkins approached me about looking for a future seminar speaker on colloids in pharmaceuticals. My first thought on doing this was to search Scifinder Scholar using the keywords colloids and pharmaceuticals. The results were somewhat vague. I asked Reg to give me a more definitive topic where I could find experts. I came up with another idea. I searched our online catalog under the subject "colloids in medicine" I found the following two books:


Title:
Colloid stability and application in pharmacy /


Title:
Colloidal nanoparticles in biotechnology /

In the front of each book there is a list of the contributing authors with their afiliations. Most of these authors were from Europe, but I did find a handful of experts that I would think are appropriate for speakers. If necessary, I will do further research on this.

Reference Question of the Day

I received this through QANDANJ:

I need information on toll booth photography, what type of equipment and camera is used.

I searched Google and the Scopus database using the following phrases:

Traffic enforcement cameras
Automatic Number Plate Recognition

The patron was satisfied with the information I sent him.