ACQUAINTING the UNDERGRADUATE with the CHEMICAL LIBRARY* JOHN R. SAMPEY Furman University, Greenville. South Carolina
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T THE twenty-fourth annual conference of Eastem College Librarians a t Columbia University last fall the accusation was made that the average college student graduates ignorant of everything except a few textbooks. The speaker preferring the charge did not single out any department or group of departments as more guilty than the others, but who has not heard the instructor in one of the physical
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* Presented before the Division of Chemical Education at the ninety-third meeting of the A. C. S., Chapel Hill, North Carolina, April 13, 1937.
sciences, when approached on the subject, seek to excuse the infrequent visits of his undergraduates to the library with the statement that there is more in one good scientific textbook than his students can master; or, if pressed further on the issue, take cover behind the old argument that his science classes have such long hours of laboratory work that there is little time left for the library. Some librarians, however, have a disconcerting way of checking on the reference work done by departments, and in many institutions of a liberal arts nature the allocation of funds is often influenced,
if not determined in large part, by the use the departments make of the library. It may be launching the argument for more library work on a low plane to mention these departmental phases of the subject, but every teacher of first-year chemistry knows that there is another side. As brought out in this same conference of librarians, the greatest handicap of the college freshman is his lack of a reading knowledge in every field. The librarians explain the situation by asserting that the student's preparatory or public school gives him little but a hatred of poetry that he is compelled to l e m by heart, while his high school e m s a mitigated approval because they never made him learn anything there. It is obviously futile to give a student with such limitations an acquaintance with the broader phases of chemical literature open to an undergraduate, or to expect the attempt in that direction to help him mate-, rially with the regular classroom and laboratory assignments, but for one with more native ability and the ambition to secure the best possible foundation for his professional career, there are few efforts that will yield larger dividends a t this stage of his training. Before suggesting how each of the fundamental undergraduate courses may make its own contribution toward a more intimate knowledge of the chemical literature by the preprofessional student, let us note how parallel reading assignments may enrich the cultural or pandemic type of first-year chemistry. One of the avowed purposes of the cultural course is to give the student an appreciation of the growing library of popular science. To teach him to read discerningly and discriminatingly therein will prove a service of ever-increasing value. The writing of term papers and the searching out of material for projects are two time-worn methods of securing library work. More consistent parallel reading throughout the course may be secured by selecting a few definite references as each new subject is approached in the course, especially if some inducement is offered to hand in written reports on the same; required parallels usually prove a bore, but the offering of extra credit for a well-prepared report will stimulate initiative in the interested student, while it may be used to prod the indifferent to improve his class standing. The references range from whole books to newspaper clippings. The JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION offers the single richest source of material for the pandemic group. Parallel reading assignments in the first-year preprofessional course will naturally be more restricted because of the mass of technicalities to be mastered a t both recitation and laboratory periods. This situation makes it easy for the instructor and the class to fall victims to the evils of a one-textbook-course; nothing will prove more deadening to the intellectual life of the instructor, or lead the student to form more readily, consciously or unconsciously, provincial ideas and attitudes that will require years to correct. Moreover, no single text can claim to be superior in its treatment of every phase of the wide field covered in general
inorganic chemistry; the experienced instructor knows when and where to guide the student to other texts. These references to other textbooks should not constitute the only parallel reading of the first-year course, for there are times when the grind of the theoretical and technical treatment should be broken with discussions from treatises written primarily from the historical and industrial points of view. Undergraduate courses in analytical chemistry are designed primarily to test and develop the student's skill in laboratory procedure. Let the parallel reading assignments contribute toward this end. References that give additional confirmatory tests in the schemes of qualitative analysis will result immediately in the better informed student reporting more accurate analyses. In quantitative analysis the beginning stndent needs to read widely in the technic of the basic operations of gravimetric and volumetric analysis if he would keep his own mistakes in the laboratory to a minimum. One way of checking on this reading before the student is admitted to the laboratory is to require him to hand in answers to a set of questions on technic taken from a number of different reference works. While stoichiometric calculations and theoretical topics are relegated to places of secondary importance in analytical chemistry, facility in handling the former is achieved only after a rigorous drill, while the latter offers an opportunity to broaden the student's foundation in general inorganic and physical chemistry. There are a number of mathematical helps for students of chemistry, and the undergradnate chemistry major will do well to make an early acquaintance with these. The problem page which has appeared in the JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION a t intervals may not assist the young analyst to calculate the results of his own analyses, but it will give him something to aim toward in his mathematical preparation, particularly if he expects to enter the field of physical chemistry. There is one other phase of library work that does have immediate practical value for the student of analytical chemistry. Mastering the art of elementary technic in quantitative analysis is so tedious and time consuming that the student who limits his knowledge to the experiments he can perform in one or even two years of laboratory work will have no appreciation of the wide scope of the science. Only by extensive reading in the many specialized fields of analytical chemistry can he hope to arrive a t any fair appraisal of this branch which has been referred to as the handmaid of the science. Microchemistry, colorimetry, organic analysis, and technical methods of analysis are a few of the fields that are being worked intensively today. A glance a t any of the issues of the Analytical Edition of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry will reveal others. The average undergraduate chemistry major perhaps does less parallel reading for the elementary course in organic chemistry than for any other. He is so overcome by the mass of data to be committed to memory that he loses interest in all else, and well he
may for only a few recent texts make any serious effort to shift the emphasis from the factual to a consideration of the application of the underlying principles of atomic and molecular structure; this commendable departure on the part of these modern texts may be capitalized further by citing the student to additional references of interpretation of organic phenomena in terms of current concepts of valence. Another means of encouraging, parallel reading in the introductory course in organic chemistry is to refer to modem industrial practices, a surprising number of which will be found to be a t variance with the classical processes emphasized in the text. Finally, the undergraduate course in physical chemistry offers unparalleled opportunity for reference work. Who does not recall spending long hours in the library
seeking the interpretation of data collected in the physical chemistry laboratory? Or who does not have to seek continuously for more light from monograph and journal articles on such topics as the behavior of solutions of electrolytes and the ultimate nature of matter? Instructors in physical chemistry have demanded and received from the undergraduate more library work than can be claimed by teachers of any other division of the science. In conclusion, the instructor who follows the instructions outlined for better acquainting the undergraduate with the chemical library can rest assured that his students will not come under the indictment made in the opening paragraph, but he may well entertain some fears for his own standing when the librarians see fit to set forth their next pronouncements.
