For many years I have taught the physical chemistry class how to find physical properties of chemical substances. The professor scheduled me for September 15th, but I have on call jury duty for that week so she pushed it ahead to today at 1 PM. Meanwhile I already scheduled my general how to find chemical information to graduate students at 11:30, so I had back to back classes. Well, when the going gets tough the tough get going.
Graduate students are always more attention during a lecture on information sources. Most of the students were new to NJIT. The problem was that the laptop provided to me by the department did not have wi-fi capabilities so I could not demonstrate any web sites or databases. I was able to use my Powerpoint presentation, but had to walk students through the steps to get to the databases. I gave a relatively long talk on Chemical Abstracts and how it evolved into Scifinder Scholar. I was given training passwords from Chemical Abstracts Service that I gave to the students to use until the end of the day. At least for today students searching the database wouldn't have to worry about being shut out by the user seats being used. A showed students how they could set up their own accounts for Scifinder Scholar.
Undergraduates are usually less attentive. At least the professor let me use her laptop with wi-fi capability to demonstrate the various web sites where students could look for physical and thermodynamic properties of chemical substances. If readers are interested, they can access the list of resources at http://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/subjectguides/phys-prop.php
When I arrived back in the library two of the graduate students stopped me to say that they had problems setting up an account. It simply that they just neglected to verifying their new account at their NJIT e-mail address. I am glad that the students were willing to learn to use Scifinder very shortly after the lecture.
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