Random Thoughts of the Day

It's just Monday while the next winter storm is supposed to come tomorrow.  The forecast is for a wintry mix of snow, sleet freezing rain and if we're lucky some warm rain.  Anyway I had an eventful shift at the reference desk.  For the first time, I juggled two reference chats.  One was very short as the student asked for a web site with chemical structures.  I referred him to Chemspider.  The other chat was quite lengthy as the student needed TAPPI (Technical Association of the Paper and Pulp Industry) Standards.  The NJIT Library does not have them so I referred him to the organization's web site.  He was able to use the search engine to determine exactly which standards he needed.  I suggested that he try our interlibrary loan service to see if we could get them from another university.

Of course there was the expected textbook questions two weeks into the semester.

45 Percent of the Nation's Undergraduates Learn Very Little in the First Two years of College

This morning Jim Kerr on  Q-104.3 said that he read an article in a newspaper saying that 45% of the nation'a undergraduates learn very little in the first two years of college.  A did a little research and found the article in the New York Times  which quotes from:

Arum, Richard, and Josipa Roksa. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Print.

There is a discussion of this at http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/24/does-college-make-you-smarter/dealing-with-a-different-type-of-college-student

I really should purchase this book and make up my mind.  I certainly learned quite a bit all those years ago in my undergraduate days at CCNY.  These early courses did form a foundation to what I learned later along.  I think an issue is that much of what is learned becomes obsolete in a short period of time.

Just some thoughts on a snowy evening.

Why do students rush to complete an assignment?

This morning I gave a class to chemical engineering students on the basics of the literature resources of their field.  The powerpoints are found on this Libguide http://researchguides.njit.edu/che396 .  I discussed the basics of searching Scifinder Scholar and Scopus.  Several times I mentioned that it takes the database only a few seconds to execute a search and display an answer set.  It takes more time for the researcher to evaluate the retrieved references since very often the search term are in the bibliographic record or abstract, but not in the desired relationship.  The students received training passwords and had to find 5 references on one of these topics:


Liquid hold-up in packed columns (or towers) for any of the following packing types: Jaeger rings, tri-packs, Novalox saddles, pall rings


Heat transfer coefficients for a flat plate exchanger


A model for particle elutriation from a fluidized bed of particles


Model for rotary kiln drier (dryer)

I told the students the training passwords expired at the end of the day.  I suggested they do the search while they had the training password and to evaluate the results later. The students were give one week to complete this assignment, but half the class turned in their assignment within 30 minutes.  Why did they rush?

1.  The assignment was too easy and they felt they had picked the 5 most relevant articles.
2.  They were not interested in literature searching and just wanted to get it finished ASAP

My concern was in either event, their expose to literature searching was just too brief.  It is my hope that the student will know when and how to use Scifinder Scholar in the future.

I will have to compare the grades of students who submitted the assignment quicky versus those who took their time with it.

Random Thoughts at the Beginning of the Spring Semester

As the Spring semester begins in the dead of winter I recall January 1972 as I entered the University of Rhode Island starting on my masters degree in chemistry. It felt very strange starting out in a new school in the middle of the academic year.  Last week a new graduate student in civil engineering approached me about research in sustainability in structural engineering.  It was nice to see such an enthusiastic student.

There are much less directional questions at this time since most students know their way around the campus.  However we will get our share of textbook questions after students see the prices at the bookstore.  There are slightly less students during the spring semester since some found out in the Fall that NJIT was not the right school for them.  Many students graduate as I did all those years ago in January.  Thus, most universities lose more students than they gain at this point.

Life goes on.

Tony Stankus spoke to the METRO Science Librarians SIG about Open Access Journals

Tony Stankus of the University of Arkansas spoke to the METRO Science Librarians SIG about the future of open access (OA) journals. We used Skype so that he spoke to us from his library.

Certainly if librarians had their way, all journals would be open access since our respective organizations would not have to pay for subscriptions. However, there are other players who must be considered. .The obvious advantage of OA journals is that it will increase readership. OA journals will help research become known to a wider audience. If an organization, can not afford a subscription-based journal, its researchers can not read it.

Successful journals will attract the best researchers. Thus established journals in any field will have nothing to worry about from newer OA journals. Physicists will want to publish in the Physical Review series while chemists will submit their manuscripts to the Journal of the American Chemical Society. I suppose any scientist is pleased when he/she is published in a prestigious journal, but is blind to the cost of it to the organization’s library.

Tony said that chemistry was the toughest field to start an OA journal. I just checked the Directory of Open Access Journals and noted there were 128 chemistry journals.

OA journals are most successful in biology and the medical sciences. The Public Library of Science (PLOS) and BioMed Central were the most noted publishers.

He concluded by saying that OA publishing will co-exit with subscription based models but not overtake them.

New York Times Article related to Jim Neal's Remarks at the VALE Conference

An article in the Business Section of Sunday's New York Times Business section titled Playing Catch-up in a Digital Library Race reminded me of remarks made by Jim Neal at the VALE conference.  It states that the National Library of Norway has already scanned about 170,000 books, 250,000 newspapers, 610,000 hours of radio broadcasts, 200,000 hours of TV and 500,000 photographs. The article by Natasha Singer echoes Jim Neal's thoughts by stating "Until recently, however, many American institutions and academic centers have concentrated on making scans of their own special treasures, or collaborating with one another on themed projects, rather than combining their electronic resources into a single online access point."

The key is having a single online access point.  Google Books is a popular resource for digital information, but it can't digitize everything.  What is the solution?  This is a challenge for today's librarians to construct the digital library of tomorrow.

Jim Neal's Keynote Address at the VALE Annual Meeing

Jim Neal, the Vice President of Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University was the keynote speaker. The title of his talk was “The Imperfect Storm: Propsects for Systemic Change Across Academic Libraries.”

I will say without reservation, it was the best VALE Keynote address since the annual conference commenced. I took notes to prevent my mind from wandering. My analysis will not be exhaustive. I will focus on the statements that impressed me the most.

There are changing roles in the library with a corresponding shifting vision. There are redundant and inefficient library operations and old work flows that need to be changed. Is the traditional reference desk really needed? [my thought]. This is an aging and ineffective service paradigm. There is constant change and new organizational models need to be built. We must respond to smaller budgets and prepare for accountability.

He mentioned that alumni and donors are largely ignored. My experience has been that very few alumni use the NJIT Library. Perhaps if we reached out to them, they would use our services and make donations specifically to support library resources.

A last copy print repository network is needed as libraries should be less reliant on printed books. He proposed a national public digital library with a dot lib domain that would create access to digital collections. There should be a national strategy for a print depository program.

He also briefly discussed:

• The creation of a library PAC (political action committee)
• 3 electronic books were purchased for every print book this Christmas season
• Columbia has 2 FTE librarians involved with assessment
• Columbia and Cornell are involved in a collaborative agreement called 2CUL
• The research libraries of NYPL will allow Columbia and NYU graduate students to check books out of the library

One remark that he made that I enjoyed was “Information Literacy – Stop the Madness!” I do feel that many librarians are coming on too strong with information literacy. It is important, but is only a small part of the academic curriculum.  I certainly don't think that Jim is "anti-information literacy."  I just interpret him as thinking similiar to me that librarians should tone it down somwhat.  People can feel threatened when we are in their faces so to speak.

Jim really covered a lot of ground in a small amount of time.  As of Monday January 10th, his powerpoint was not on the VALE site.  I would like to include it here.

Photos from the conference were taken by Ray Schwartz

The Powerpoint of Jim Neal's talk can be found at http://www.valenj.org/annual-conference/2011/keynote-speaker (entered by Bruce on January 18)

2011 VALE Meeting Preliminary Report

I have not created any entries here for almost 2 weeks.  I hope nobody thought I abandoned this blog.  Before I write a detailed analysis of the meeting, I feel that I must review my notes and look at some of the web sites described by the speakers.  For now, let me talk about the "social networking" aspects of this and other professional meetings.

A major purpose of this an other meetings is to meet colleagues face to face to discuss professional issues informally.  It was nice to encounter former NJIT librarians who have moved on to other New Jersey Universities:

David McMillan - Caldwell College
Ellen Johnston - Caldwell College
Carol Nurse - Montclair State
Ray Schwartz - William Paterson University
Josene - Union County College

I'll mention a few of the people I had spoke to today

Stevens crew:
Linda Benninghove
Scott Smith
Valerie Forrestal
Barbara Arnett

Dana Library Crew
Ann Watkins
Bobbi Tipton
Natalie Borosovets

Dave Peterson - Burlington County College

Olivia Nellums - Camden County College - check out her blog at http://librarianscommute.blogspot.com/

Maureen Gorman and Valerie Tucci - TCNJ

There were many more.

We also had a meeting of the VALE Reference Services Commitee

For more information see http://www.valenj.org/meeting/valenj-acrlnjla-cus-users-conference .  The Twitter tag for the conference was #vale2011

Check this journal in a few days for more of my reflections on the meeting.