Revised Publications List of Bruce Slutsky

Slutsky, B., & Aytac, S. (2014). Publication Patterns of Science, Technology, and Medical Librarians: Review of the 2008–2012 Published Research. Science and Technology Libraries, 33(4), 369-382. doi:10.1080/0194262X.2014.952486

Osorio, N. L., Slutsky, Bruce. (2012). A Tribute and BioBibliometric Study of Ellis Mount, the First Editor-in-Chief of Science & Technology Libraries. Science and Technology Libraries, 31(4), 394-411. doi: 10.1080/0194262x.2012.730385

Slutsky, B. (1993). Communicating Science to the Public: An Address to Non-Science Librarians. The Reference Librarian(No. 40), 73-87

Slutsky, B. (1991). The American Chemical Society Career Consultants Program. The Indicator, 72(8), 24
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Slutsky, B. (1991). A Careers in Chemical Information Workshop. Journal of Chemical Education, 68(1), 43-45.

Slutsky, B. (1991). How to Avoid Science Anxiety Among Sience Librarians. Science and Technology Libraries, 12(1), 11-19.

Slutsky, B. (1990). Asksam in the New York Public Libary. In M. Fox (Ed.), Exploring Asksam (pp. 43-58). New York: Future Communications Systems.

Slutsky, B. (1990). Informed Career Choices. Chemical and Engineering News, 68(2), 3.

Slutsky, B. (1990). Other Chemical Information Careers. Chapter One, 4(3), 32.

Slutsky, B. (1989). A Chemical Abstracts Training Seminar for Science Librarians. Science and Technology Libraries, 10(1), 55-76.

Lamb, F. A., Cote, Philip N., Slutsky, Bruce, Vitimberga, Bruno M. (1974). Reduction of 9 - (p-methoxyphenyl)-9-fluorenylacetaldhyde on activated alumina. Journal of Organic Chemistry, 39(18). doi: 10.1021/jo00932a026

Environmental Engineering Students Use Mostly Web Sites in Their Bibliographies

For many years I have taught library skills to a class of Environmental Engineering students.  This course is required of all civil engineering majors.  I give my standard lecture on the organization of the scientific and technical literature and then discuss in detail the technical databases such as Scopus that would provide articles that they could use for their papers.  Here are the topics for this semester:

1. Nuclear Power Plants:

• What are the different types of nuclear power plants?

• What are the health/environmental concerns?

• What are the ways to address the health/environmental concerns? 

2. Tetrachloroethylene in Groundwater: 

• What is Tetrachloroethylene and how does it get into the groundwater?

• Why is it an environmental and health concern?

• What are the ways to address the situation? 

3. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) 

• What are PAHs?

• What are the human health/environmental concerns?

• What are the ways to address the concerns?

4. Formaldehyde in Building Materials:

• What is Formaldehyde?

• Why is it an environmental and health concern in building materials?

• What are the ways to address the situation? 

5. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System: 

• What is it/what does it do?

• What are the potential environmental concerns associated with the pipeline? 

• What are the ways to address the environmental/health concerns? 

6. Light Pollution:

• What is light pollution and what causes it?

• What are the environmental/health concerns?

• What are the ways to address the situation? 

7. Mercury in Fish:  

• What is the source of Mercury?

• What are the environmental/health concerns?

• What are the ways to address the situation? 

8.  The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill:

• What was it?

• What were the environmental/health concerns?

• How was the situation addressed?

9. The Bhopal, India Disaster:

• What was it?

• What were the environmental and health concerns?

• What laws, regulations, or safety practices were developed after the disaster?

10. The Hurricane Katrina Disaster:

• When/where did the hurricane strike?

• What environmental/health concerns resulted from the hurricane?

• What are the ways to prevent similar environmental/health concerns in the future?

11. Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE) in Consumer Products:

• What is the source of PBDE?

• What are the environmental/health concerns?

• What are the ways to address the situation?

Anyway, the lecture was given in the third week of the semester, yet students always wait until the last minute to do the assignment. But is disappointing to see that two thirds of the references cited are from web sites. They just love to Google away to find information. At least the web sites were from reputable sources. But I feel badly when so much time and effort is devoted to teaching how to search the databases and students don't seem to pay attention.

Met NJIT's New Dean of CSLA Today

There was a reception today for faculty and staff to meet Kevin Belfield who joined NJIT as Dean of the College of Sciences and Liberal Arts.  I was pleased to find out that Dr. Belfield  is a chemist who has done extensive research in photon absorption and fluorescence among other areas.  He has 363 publication in Scifinder with over 4000 cited references reported in Scopus.  His h index is 31.

I certainly welcome him to NJIT and look forward to working with him in the future.

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.