Freecycling - Reference Question of the Day

In a technical writing class (ENG 352) at NJIT students are required to revise an article in the Wikipedia that is poorly written or cursory in nature.  Yesterday a student approached me about finding such an article.  I showed him how to search for articles designated as stubs in the Wikipedia.  He later indicated that he would like to update the article about Freecycling.

Freecycling is when a person passes on, for free, an unwanted item to another person who needs that item.  Certainly this decreases the amount of waste that would go into the waste stream.  There is an old saying that "one man's trash is another man's treasure."

Today is My 33rd Anniversary as an information professional

On June 25, 1979 which was also a Monday I started as a library information scientist with Schering Corporation in Bloomfield, NJ.  My job was to search for chemical structures using the printed Chemical Abstracts.  We did online searching using Medline and Dialog as well.  When I look back, I realize how the technology back then was so primitive.  Today chemists can use a structure drawing program to search Scifinder to determine the novelty of a structure.  Back then we used slow modems which allowed only for retrieval of textual information.  There were no PCs, tablets, or laptops back then. While I was employed at Schering Corporation I obtained an MLS at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.


Schering Corporation was acquired by Merck a few years ago.  After leaving Schering I worked for the New York Public Library, St. John's University, and NJIT.  The years have really flown by.

Summer Projects at the NJIT Library

Summers are always slow for public service academic librarians since only a small number of students take classes.  Very few people approach the reference desk with questions.  This leaves us time to work on some projects in preparation for the new academic year in September.  Below are two major projects.

1. Weeding - there are thousands of books that have not circulated in years.  Sci-tech books often become dated within a few years.  Since NJIT is not a library of record, we are justified in de-accessioning older and little used materials.  I am going into the stacks in my areas of responsibility and weeding books that are duplicates or are in poor physical condition.  A colleague found notes from the Milwaukee School of Engineering stating that all items selected for withdrawal should be placed in a storage area for one year before discarding.  This may be difficult since we have little room that can be used for storage.

2. Revising the profile for patron driven acquisitions of electronic book.  For one year we had a pilot project where we placed about 28,000 e-books in our catalog that users could borrow.  After a book was borrowed  6 times the library would purchase the book.  This was a successful venture for both the patrons and the library.  We would have to pay much more money to purchase all the book borrowed by our patrons.  The only downside was that we spent more money than we originally anticipated.  Over the summer we have spent time revising the subject profile that we used during the first year.  We are also dropping publishers of books not appropriate for our collection.

Best Wishes to Dana Roth

I read on the Chemical Information Listserv that Caltech has an opening for a chemistry librarian.  There was an explanation stating that Dana Roth will be staying on part time after the position is filled.  Dana has to be the best academic chemistry librarian in the business.  Very often people posted difficult reference questions on the listserv.  Within minutes, Dana would post the answer.

Dana is well respected by his colleagues.  There is an award given by the Chemistry Division of SLA known as the Wiggins-Roth Award. I guess I should write a blog entry about Gary Wiggins. Dana also was the recipient of Caltech’s Thomas W. Schmitt Annual Staff Prize in 2008.  There is a nice article about Dana on a Caltech website.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dana twice.  The late Anne Buck who hired me at NJIT moved on to Caltech and became Dana’s boss.   Sometime in the late 1990s he was in the east coast and came to visit me in the NJIT library.  We only had nice things to say about Ann.  I found out from Dana of Anne’s untimely passing in April 2003.

On June 10, 2003 when SLA met in New York City, I organized a gathering of baseball enthusiasts including Dana  at Yankee Stadium.  The Yankees beat the HoustonAstros 5-3 .  The next day 6 Houston pitchers combined to pitch a no hitter against the Yankees.

I certainly wish Dana all the best as he moves into a part time position at Caltech. He still will be an asset to the chemical information community.  The new hire will have a great mentor.

McNair Summer Research Institute at NJIT

Today for the first time I participated in the McNair Summer Research Institute at NJIT .  Over the years I have taught numerous classes to students to teach them how to use the electronic resources of the library to find information needed in their classes.  It is very frustrating to see their being inattentive and appearing to be disinterested.

I spoke to the group for about one hour this morning using my standard lecture on how to develop thought process to develop a search strategy in the various databases and to take the time to evaluate the reference and then locate the document.  I was pleasantly surprised to observe how attentive and interested the students were.  After I completed my lecture the students had time to search the databases to find information on their topics which included:

• Hydrogen production from solar energy
• Sodium Cellulose Sulfate
• Participatory learning

I was very pleased with the questions that the students asked as their searched the literature.