Observations on the use of library information systems by chemical engineering undergraduates

American Institute of Chemical Engineering Annual Conference, 2004. Austin, Texas. IT in Chemical Engineering Education: Session & Roundtable DiscussionLibraries represent a complex “information system.” Librarians understand the nature of this system and, working collaboratively with engineering faculty, can make this system more accessible to undergraduate chemical engineering students. The engineering faculty member presents an engineering “problem” to the students. The librarian shows the students how to unravel the library’s “information system” to best effect for the problem presented. The librarian and faculty member work together to ensure that students find, recognize and utilize the needed information appropriately. Once a Chemical Engineering student graduates and moves on to a career in the field, such resource knowledge can prove to be a significant leverage toward success. Many practicing Chemical Engineers likely are not aware of the significant advances that have taken place in information sciences and now available commonly in research libraries. \ud We will first describe some of the physical and web-based literature extraction tools. We will then provide an example of a simple questionnaire and study element offered to seniors in Chemical Engineering to test their use and knowledge of some key resources in a typical academic library. In addition, we will show our first results with this questionnaire and request the audience to participate