For the first time in all my years at NJIT I taught students
of organic chemistry how to use information resources. I am really going boing to my roots in
getting into the profession of science librarianship. When I worked as a laboratory chemist I used
the printed Chemical Abstracts to look up preparations of target molecules. I didn’t use online databases until I worked
as an information scientist in the pharmaceutical industry in 1979. Obviously, information technology has changed
quite a bit since then.
The professor only allowed me 40 minutes to do my
lecture. The students were instructed to
look at my Libguide in chemistry and chemical engineering (http://researchguides.njit.edu/chemistry)
before the class. I did not use my
standard powerpoint, but suggested that the students view it after my
lecture. I started out by covering the
nature of a scientific journal and the peer review process. The students will be assigned a molecule and
be required to find an article on either preparation or isolation from a
natural source. They must also find an
article on general properties and one on biological properties.
With that thought in mind, I brought the Merck Index and had
students pick out two substances at random that I would use for demonstration
purposes. I demonstrated:
- Scifinder
- Scopus
- Pubchem
- Chemspider
- Wikipedia
I showed them how to find information on those substances
from those 5 sources. At the end of the
lecture there were no questions. I hope
I succeeded.
