Another Frustrating Experience in Information Literacy

For many years I have taught a one hour lecture on how to find physical and thermodynamic properties of chemical substances.  I even remember back in the 1990s taking a book truck with me holding print data compilations.  Obviously, times have changed an all the resources demonstrated are electronic.

This morning I received an e-mail from the professor stating that he had the flu and would not come in.  He did notify the class to come to the training room in the library for the lecture.  Only 7 of the 14 students enrolled in that class showed up.  What is exasperating is that the students cut a class in their major.  I guess the "substitute teacher mentality" has reared its ugly head again.  At least the students who came appeared to be attentive.

How a Chemistry Librarian Aced a Difficult Poetry Reference Question

Today I answered the first poetry reference question I received in my career.  We received the following question via e-mail.  I am changing the requester’s name to protect his privacy.

 My name is "Arnold Grunt". I am in search of a very old poem I wrote in 1989. I won Honorable Mention in the 12th Annual NJ Poetry Contest. I would be a great delight to see it once again. The name of the poem is "The Once And Forever Friend".

I really hope you can locate it, Would mean the world to me. Thank you very much either way. 

The obvious thing to do in this day and age is to Google the name of the poem.  The next step is the Google the author’s name and poems.  The next approach was to Google New Jersey Poetry Contest.  These approaches were unsuccessful.

I began to wonder why this person would contact the NJIT Library since our collection is primarily geared toward scientific and engineering resources.

Just for the heck of it I searched our library’s catalog using the keywords poetry and New Jersey.  I found the following book series:

The best student poetry in New Jersey.  We had volumes from 1979-1990.  I looked in the 1989 volume and sure enough the poem was there.  I scanned the page and sent it to the requester who was in the 5th grade in 1989. 

It turns out that the volumes were edited by the late Herman Estrin who put was Professor of English at NJIT.  Apparently this person remembered the competition was at NJIT back in 1989 and thought to contact the school 25 years later to find his poem.

Hey!  I am a chemistry librarian.

Random Thoughts at the Beginning of the Spring Semester

I believe more and more that reference is dead.  I think the database publishers have created products that are easy to use, thus students do not need assistance from reference librarians. At the beginning of the semester students are not asking questions about textbooks. I guess they all know the library does not carry required textbooks. Let’s face it, reference is dead.  I am glad that I am approaching retirement.  I wish I could look for another profession, but nobody would hire me at my age.

My computer did not have internet access all day.  I had to go to the information commons a few times to respond to important e-mails.  The man from the telecommunications department figured out the problem, has to shut the internet access to the entire building after midnight.  Things should be back to normal tomorrow.

Best of Luck to Jason Kucsma

Today I attended the Annual Meeting of New York Metropolitan Library Council (METRO).  it was announced that Jason Kucsma has resigned as Executive Director to return to his native Ohio.  He will become Deputy Director of the Toledo Public Library.

I mentioned in this journal in October 2011 that Jason was internally promoted to Executive Director.  Since 2000 I have been the convener of the METRO Science Librarians SIG and have worked with many people at METRO.  It has been my pleasure to work with Jason and his staff since he came to METRO in 2008 and became Executive Director in 2011.

I certainly wish him all the best in his new position in Toledo.  I am sure he will do well there.  He will be sorely missed by his colleages in NYC.

Please read this article by Davis Erin Anderson about Jason.

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
.
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.