Jason Kucsma is appointed Executive Director of METRO

It was announced at the Annual Meeting of the Metropolitan New York Library Council Meeting on October 17th that Jason Kucsma was appointed its Executive Director succeeding Dottie Hiebing who recently retired.  As convener of the Science Librarians SIG I had the pleasure of working with Jason in his position as Emerging Technologies Manager.  I congratulate him and wish him well in his new position.

Offical Announcement

When Faculty are not information literate

Information literacy and its assessment has been discussed throughout the library community for years.  What do you do when faculty lack these skills?  In the course of a year I get requests for books or documents from senior faculty.  It is a simple matter of searching the library catalog to see if we have the item and if it is available in print or electronic format.  Is it a matter of laziness or arrogance?  I will always answer the question, but do it reluctantly.  It is my job to provide information to my community, but I have to think of that old cliche - "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for one day.  Show a man how to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime.

Again - Information Literacy and the Substitute Teacher

About a year ago I wrote an entry about a frustrating experience in teaching to a class of biomedical engineering students.  A similar situation occurred on Monday while teaching to a chemical enginering class.  Out of 20 students in the class only 14 came.  Several arrived very late while a few others left in the middle.  I have certainly experienced this before, but it is especially disappointing when advanced undergraduates don’t take a class in their major seriously  I tried to explain how important learning how to find information in peer reviewed sources is so important, but they saw me as a substitute teacher.  I gave the class an assignment, and told the professors that the no shows and walk outs should get "zeros" if they don't do the assignment.

Only 10 out of the 20 students enrolled in the class even bothered to submit the assignment. [Added to this journal entry on November 9, 2011]

Providing alumni access to library databases

I was intrigued by this article which reports that 19 universities now provide access to JSTOR by paying 10% more than the institution's current license fee.  From time to time the reference librarians do get questions from alumni asking if they can access the databases remotely.  The answer is no since once students graduate they lose their computing privileges.  They are certainly welcome to visit NJIT and get a guest ID and search the databases.  However, this option is often impractical.

Certainly, a university should maintain good relationships with their alumni by providing at least some library services.  JSTOR is a humanities database that does not provide access to current journals.  I tend to doubt that scientiic and technical publishers would follow JSTOR's lead and allow universities to give free access to alumni who now work for profit making organizations.

Reference Question from a Non-Affiliate

In this era of Google, very few indepedent researchers visit academic libraries.  This morning an older gentleman had a reference question about a chemical company that existed from the 1930s to 1960s.  He already did his Googling, but figured he needed to search print resources.  I explained that the collection at NJIT served the curriculum here and that I doubted that there would be historical information about a company.  I was able to find articles and patents where this company was listed as a corporate author.  This gave him some information on what the company manufactured.  I referred him to the Dana Library at Rutgers which has a much stronger business collection.  He also said that he planned to visit the New Jersey Historical Society.

It's nice to get an unusual and challenging reference question.

The American Institute of Physics offers free access to publications of Nobel Laureates

AIP is pleased to make available free of charge a selection of research papers these Nobel Laureates have published in its journals, Conference Proceedings, and Physics Today magazine. To view any of these materials go to http://journals.aip.org/Nobel2011.html.


Sharing half the prize is Saul Perlmutter from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley. Sharing the other half jointly are Brian P. Schmidt from the Australian National University, and Adam G. Riess from Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute.

I thank the American Instiute of Physics for making this offer to the physics community.

Congratulations to Ellen Lieberman

Ellen Lieberman, Director of Extended Learning Delivery has accepted the postion of Assistant Dean at Douglass Residential college - Rutgers University.  She will be leaving NJIT after 26 years of distinguished service.  I certainly congratulation Ellen and wish her the best on her position.  I had the pleasure of assisting her in her research endeavors.  She will be sorely missed.