Helping out with the Research Roadmaps

The research roadmaps offered by the NJIT Library are described at http://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/instruction/workshops.php . Today I did a workshop for IL 101 given to Freshman taking Humanities 101. The course description is as follows:

Focuses on developing written and oral communication skills; emphasizes writing expository and research essays; preparing oral reports; drafting, revising, editing; evaluation and proper documentation of source material; using rhetorical strategies such as narration and argument.

The librarians must reach over 900 students taking this course. The majority of the sections are taught by the liaison to the humanities and the information literacy specialist. Even though I prefer teaching classes in chemistry and related disciplines, I am willing to help out with this endeavor. I try to explain to students that learning how to use information resources is a gradual process. They learn the basics in this introductory course, but eventually must learn the specialized databases in their major. Hopefully the information literacy skills learned here are taken with them as they move to a graduate program and eventually into a business environment.

Chemical Abstracts Service Announces its 50 Millionth Substance

Here is an excerpt from the press release issued by Jim Corning:


"Columbus, Ohio (September 8, 2009) – Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, announced that on September 7 it recorded the 50 millionth substance in CAS REGISTRY, the world’s most comprehensive and high-quality compendium of publicly disclosed chemical information. The recently registered substance is a novel arylmethylidene heterocycle with analgesic properties. Reaching the 50 million mark so quickly is an indicator of the accelerating pace of scientific knowledge. CAS registered the 40 millionth substance just nine months ago—in contrast, it took 33 years for CAS to register the 10 millionth compound in 1990."

The complete press release may be found at
http://www.cas.org/newsevents/releases/50millionth090809.html

For an up to date count users may consult http://www.cas.org/cgi-bin/cas/regreport.pl

Most substances (80%?) have appeared in the literature only once.

My Powerpoints are on Slideshare

I found out about a service called Slideshare where a person can mount his/her Powerpoint presentations to allow others to use them. My 6 files are available at http://www.slideshare.net/bruceslutsky . It states how many times each Powerpoint has been viewed. I was surprised to see that my lesson on how to find information in civil and environmental engineering was viewed 46 times in 5 days, more than the chemistry related files.

Presentation to Chemical Engineering Graduate Students Yesterday

I gave a presentation to CHE 794 yesterday. Below is a description of the course from the NJIT course catalog:

ChE 794 - Professional Presentations for Ph.D. Students (0 credits)Intended to help students make better technical presentations. Each student is required to make a presentation on a research topic; guest lectures will occur during the semester. Effective From: Fall 2007

Professor Boris Khusid asked me to talk about how I use Powerpoint in my work. I gave a brief introduction on how Powerpoint can be used effectively and that it should assist the speaker and not be a distraction. I then described the 4 Powerpoints that I use at NJIT to teach chemistry/chemical engineering students to find information from print and electronic sources:

1. General Introduction
2. How to Find Physical Property Data
3. Chemical Abstracts and Scifinder Scholar
4. Scopus and other resources

My training has to be very cursory. I also invite students to come to me in the future if they need assistance in finding information. They did seem to be attentive, but nobody asked questions. Under these circumstances it is impossible to assess the impact of the lecture. I don't expect students to become chemical information specialists, but just to be aware of the resources in their field that are available now and in the future when they move on to another academic program or to industry.

Started Using Slideshare today

I recently became aware of the program Slideshare. I am in the process of uploading the Powerpoint Presentations I've developed at NJIT so I can more easily share them with my colleagues.

It seems that students only want online resources

This morning I went onto QANDANJ and received a question from a Rutgers student. She had given me 2 incomplete citations and wanted an online source for them. It took me a little time to determine that they were both book chapters from books that Rutgers had only in print format. She seemed very disappointed that the sources were not available online. I have had some discussions with faculty who say that today's students do not want to read. I guess that's the way it is with today's students.

Working on the late shift

Once the academic year begins we work one day a week from 1 PM to 8 PM. The librarian on the late shift must be at the reference desk from 5 PM - 8 PM. The first hour is usually busy since the day students are still here while the evening students are arriving and often visit the library before class. From 6 PM - 8 PM there are few transactions at the desk since students are in class until 9 PM. The main advantage of working late is avoiding the rush hour crowds on the trains. The disadvantage is getting home late and waking up early the next morning.