It is Still Frustrating When Students Don't Ask Questions During A Lecture on Chemistry Databases

Today I gave a seminar to graduate students of chemistry.  I always try to vary each presentation I give by emphaszing different resources.  There is so much to cover in a short period of time, thus the lecture must be cursory.  I spend a little extra time on Knovel since this is a new resource in the NJIT library.  I shouwed how it can be used to easily find physical property data of chemical substances.  The profesor who coordinates the seminars ask me to discuss predatory journals.  He gives an assignment where students must analyze an article from a chemistry journal.  He felt that many student chose articles from poor quality journals.

Throughout the lecture, I felt that I was talking to myself as the students did not ask any questions.  Is it because:

• They were totally disinterested
• They already knew how to search the chemical literature
• The lecture was cursory as I had to cover so much material, but none in depth

At the very end a student asked if there was a limitation on the number of Scifnder users at a time.  I answered that this was no longer true.

I encouraged the students to take some time to access and practice using many of the resources tht I discussed in the lecture.  I will never know if they followed up.

Thomas Galante is Getting a Free Vacation

I write entries in this blog to comment on library issues.  It seems that the problems with the Queens Library have been my number one topic recently.  Several news sources including the New York Daily News report that Thomas Galante is being put on paid leave pending the results of city and state investigations.  It is obvious that he is getting a free vacation at a salary of $392,000 a year.  Government investigations are always slow so this creep can get his salary and more money from the Elmont, Long Island school district.  He has obviously robbed tax payers and library users of big bucks.  The long term problem will be that individuals and corporations will be reluctant to donate to the Queens Library as they will never know how their money is being spent.

Random Comments at the Beginnning of the Semester

The students are not getting younger, I am getting older.  This is the biggest freshman class at NJIT and I wish all of them the best,

I have already arranged 3 graduate level seminars and am trying for a fourth.  I feel that learning how to use technical databases is much more important at the graduate level since those advanced students must pick a topic for their dissertation research and know that they are not repeating the work of others.  Graduate students must also know to do current awareness research in their areas of interest.  Science and engineering students at the undergraduate level use their textbooks and laboratory manuals and are not that reliant on peer reviewed journals.

This semester I will particpate at the freshman level introducing students to the databases that NJIT provides.  I hope they can be aware of the differences in searching databases as opposed to searching Google.  Since the reference transactions are still declining we most focus our efforts on instruction.