Today is My 24th Anniversary of Working at the NJIT Library

It was 24 years ago today that I started at the NJIT Library.  Certainly so much has changed over the years.   There were only a few staff computers while none were available to students in the library.  There were only dumb terminals to search the library’s online catalog.  We only had two CD-ROM databases back then:

• Applied Science and Technology Index
• Proquest Business Database

Email was very primitive as we used the Tesla computer which was a VMS/VAX.  The internet was in its infancy as there was only a text based browser to search the nascent World Wide Web.

The NJIT campus has expanded dramatically over these 24 years with more academic buildings, dormitories and a much larger student body.  Some faculty and staff sadly passed away over the years while others retired or moved on to other positions.

Life goes on and in the years to come there will be more technological change and growth of the campus.

Assignments Must Be Given After a Lecture on the Use of Information Resources

For several years I have taught a class in how to find information in chemical engineering.   At one time I was given 3 class sessions to do the class which included:

• An Overview
• Chemical Abstracts and Scifinder
• Scopus and other resources.

This semester I was limited to 70 minutes.  Thus I really had to rush through many of the concepts.  At the beginning I invited the students to come see me if they had any questions about the information resources discussed in class.  I also said they can’t learn to search the databases, by just listening to me and they should take some time after class to experiment with the databases.

In previous semesters when I taught this class, I was able to give an assignment for students to search Scifinder and Scopus to find relevant articles on several topics.  They were graded on how the retrieved information answered the search question and if they formatted the bibliographic information properly.  They were also required to determine if the retrieved article was in our library’s collection.

The professor no longer allows me to give this assignment.  She says the students have a big workload for this course and cannot be over overburdened.  I do give out search questions for the students to do voluntarily, but I doubt they will do them.

If there is no assignment, can this training be effectual?  Will they take the information literacy lecture seriously?  As usual, I observed students inattentive by looking at their smartphones and otherwise appearing disinterested.

What can I do?