Next METRO Science Librarian SIG Meeting on Special Projects for Data Librarians Thursday December 11 1:30 PM

The Next Meeting will be:

Thursday December 11, 1:30 PM at METRO Headquarters:

57  East 11th Street - 4th Floor
New York, NY

There will be two presentations focused on special projects for data librarians in academia:

1.  New York University librarians Samantha Guss, Him Mistry, and Andrew Battista will discuss Spatial Data Repository at NYU. They'll focus on the genesis of this project, as well as the infrastructure, considerations, and future plans for their repository

2. Minglu Wang and Bonnie Fong from Rutgers University will discuss their initiative to provide mandatory data management training for graduate students of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department.

To register http://metro.org/events/register/571/pre/

For further information, please contact Bruce Slutsky

More Frustrations With Information Literacy

Many times the professor does not come to the information literacy training session.  Sometimes an excuse is given, but often the professor doesn't come in and doesn't give a reason.  How can we expect the students to be interested, when their professor is not.

When I give a class to students of freshman English, I generally lecture for 40 minutes or so and then give the students time to work on their projects.  If the professor is not there, the students leave.  When the regular teacher stays, the students either do work for other classes or surf the web for fun.

A few months ago I gave a class for physics graduate student with the professor who coordinates the seminars in the room.  This individual constantly sends me e-mail asking if the library has specific items.  Certainly a faculty member should know the basics of locating materials in the library.  Even after this training this person still e-mails me with basic questions.  I guess he just doesn't want to be bothered.

Random Comments About Information Literacy in the Fall 2014 Semester

I haven’t written much for this blog so here goes with some random comments about teaching information literacy.

I still feel the “substitute teacher mentality” with students and information literacy.  Back in our elementary school days it was party time when a substitute teacher came in.  I think many students see a librarian coming to their class as an outsider and don’t take the lecture seriously.

Today I taught my class in how to find physical and thermodynamic properties of chemical substances.  A student sitting right in front of me was actually sleeping during the lecture.  I could understand if he was in the back, but isn’t it insulting when he dozed off right in front of the teacher.

A few weeks ago I taught a class to some graduate students in physics.  The professor had coffee and cake for the students.  During the talk nobody asked questions, but several students approached me after the talk while eating.  I guess they prefer to ask their questions privately.

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.

Next METRO Science Librarians SIG Meeting set for October 6

The METRO Science Librarians SIG meeting set for the afternoon of Monday October 6 is titled:

Retraction Watch at Four -- What Retractions Tell Us About the Failures (and Successes) of Scholarly Publishing

The speaker is Adam Marcus the managing editor of Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News and Anesthesiology News. His freelance articles have appeared in Science, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, The Scientist, Birder’s World, Sciam.com, and many other publications and web sites.

For further information and instructions on how to register, please go to http://metro.org/events/538/

You can contact me at bruce.slutsky@njit.edu for more information as well.