Collection Development Statement
Chemistry

Written by
Howard M. Dess
August, 1995

A. SYSTEMWIDE SUBJECT OVERVIEW

A.1. Type and Level of Programs Supported by the Chemistry Collection

A.1.a. Degree Programs Offered at Each Major Geographical Center

New Brunswick: B.S., M.S., M.S.T., Ph.D.
Newark: B.S., M.S., Ph.D.
Camden: B.S.

A.1.b. New Brunswick Undergraduate Programs

The B.S. in chemistry offered by the Department of Chemistry, Busch Campus, comprises a required core program plus a number of options, including the following:

• Biological option
• Environmental option
• Chemical physics option
• Chemical education option

Two separate and distinct undergraduate programs in biochemistry are offered by the two different biochemistry departments which coexist within Rutgers: (1) A B.S. degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry is offered by the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, located on Busch Campus. (2) A B.S. degree in Biochemistry is offered by the Department of Applied Microbiology and Plant Physiology at Cook College.

A.1.c. New Brunswick Graduate Programs

M.S. and Ph.D. degree programs are offered both in Biochemistry and Chemistry. In addition, special joint programs are also offered by Rutgers in conjunction with the UMDNJ Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, leading to the M.S. or Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry (or other) subject areas.

A.1.d. New Brunswick Graduate Certificate Programs and Core Curricula

The New Brunswick Graduate School offers interdisciplinary programs of concentration that complement formal advanced degree programs in the fields of Biochemistry or Chemistry. These programs do not in themselves lead to degrees but are designed to facilitate certain interdisciplinary specializations such as Molecular Biophysics (core program only) or Biotechnology (both core program and certificate program are available). The former program, for example, utilizes faculty experts from the following organizations and academic departments:

A.1.e. Research Centers or Programs with Strong Ties to Chemistry

• Center for Advanced Biotechnology & Medicine (CABM)
• Center for Advanced Food Technology (CAFT)
• Center for Ceramic Research
• Center for Biomaterials and Medical Devices
• Fiber Optic Material Research Program
• Laboratory for Surface Modification
• NIH Funded Training Programs in Molecular Biophysics and Biotechnology

A.1.f. Miscellaneous

In addition to the specifically named groups and programs within Rutgers and UMDNJ enumerated in the preceding sections, all of which are strongly dependent on the ready accessibility of a high caliber chemistry collection, consideration must also be given to the chemistry based information needs of the following areas as well: engineering, environmental studies, materials science, microbiology, pharmaceutical science.

Finally, although collection development in the field of chemistry is totally focused on the needs of the Rutgers academic scientific community, it should be noted that extensive use of this collection is made by other New Jersey institutions of higher learning as well as local chemical and pharmaceutical companies whose R&D facilities are highly concentrated in this state.

A.2. Selectors

Primary selector in the field of chemistry:

Physical Sciences Resource Librarian located at the Library of Science and Medicine, Busch Campus.

Related selectors at other locations:

Physical Science Librarian, Dana Library, Newark.

Physical Science Librarian, Robeson Library, Camden.

A.3. Purpose

The Busch Campus chemistry collection supports the research and educational needs in the field of chemistry for the entire Rutgers New Brunswick academic community and to a lesser extent serves a similar function for related programs at the Newark and Camden campuses. Over the years, as faculty research interests have evolved and ramified into many new channels so also has collection development reflected this progression. Today, the chemistry collection serves the needs not just of the 44 faculty members associated with the Chemistry Department, but it is a vital resource for all chemical scientists throughout the University, regardless of formal departmental affiliation.

In terms of subfields of chemistry that are currently emphasized in our collections, the broadly defined biochemical science area is especially prominently represented at Rutgers, with almost half of the Chemistry Department faculty involved in some aspect. The following two departments are also very active in this area: The Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry with 17 faculty members (Busch Campus), and the Department of Applied Microbiology and Plant Physiology with 11 members (Cook Campus). In addition to the bioscience area, nearly one third of the Chemistry Department faculty are engaged in a variety of physical chemistry research projects, and the remainder pursue research interests in analytical, inorganic, and organic chemistry.

Chemistry is fundamental to so many other areas of science and technology that, it has become increasingly interdisciplinary, with particularly strong linkages to academic fields such as biology, ceramic science, food science, materials science, medicine, pharmaceutical science, physics, etc. and the chemistry collection supports ongoing work in all of these fields to varying degrees.

The extreme geographical dispersion of the three major campuses necessitates some degree of duplication of essential library print media resources in the field of chemistry among these centers. This situation is expected to persist into the foreseeable future until or unless more extensive electronic access to needed chemical information sources and data can be made available on a university-wide basis.

A.4. Resource Sharing

There are no special resource sharing arrangements applicable beyond the normal RULS ILL and materials delivery operations.

A.5. History

Chemistry as an academic entity in the university traces its origins back to 1864 when the Rutgers Scientific School was founded with departments of agriculture, chemistry, and engineering. Graduate education in chemistry at Rutgers dates back to the teen years of this century, and the first Ph.D. degree in this discipline was awarded in 1917. Since that time a total of 1273 Ph.D. degrees in chemistry or biochemistry have been awarded by Rutgers (including 116 from the Newark Chemistry Department). Of this total, the vast majority date from the period 1975-1994.

Separate, small chemistry departments devoted solely to teaching were first established in Douglass College and University College. The Douglass College Chemistry Department initiated its own research program sometime in the 1970's and its faculty roster had expanded to 15 members by 1981 because of the creation of Cook College and the administrative decision that Douglass would assume responsibility for the teaching of chemistry to Cook College students. The University College Chemistry Department, located on Busch Campus, started a separate research program despite the handicap of a much smaller size (only five faculty members). All three of these independent departments were affiliated into a loose federation under the nominal supervision of the New Brunswick Rutgers College Chemistry Department chairperson.

The overall reorganization of the University which was launched in 1981 finally led to the consolidation of these three semi-autonomous organizations into a single unified Chemistry Department, physically situated on Busch Campus in the expanded Wright-Riemann Laboratories building. The Chemistry Library has been an integral part of that facility for over 35 years now.

In the 1993/94 academic year, chemistry undergraduate courses at all levels had a combined enrollment of about 5300 students for the New Brunswick campuses. Graduate level chemistry enrollment for the same period was 116 full-time students and 33 part-time.

A.6 Location of Materials

The Busch Campus Chemistry Library, located adjacent to the Wright-Riemann Laboratory building, contains the principal chemistry research collection for all of Rutgers. Subscriptions to 218 current periodicals are currently in force plus 59 standing orders for monographic series. The monograph collection totals approximately 9000 titles including over 700 reference works, and nearly 1000 Rutgers dissertations and theses. Because of space limitations at the Chemistry Library, nearly 20% of the total monograph collection is held in the Annex, as well as thousands of volumes of chemistry periodical backruns.

The Library of Science and Medicine also contains a substantial collection of chemistry monographs, nearly 5600 volumes (plus 1300 more in the Annex) and a very modest number of current chemistry periodicals and standing orders. Collection development for the LSM chemistry collection is much more limited than at the Chemistry Library. The primary focus is on chemistry reference materials with special emphasis on the most important secondary sources such as "Chemical Abstracts", various encyclopedic works, handbooks, specialized chemical dictionaries, chemical nomenclature guides and aids, physical property data compilations, chemical manufacturing information, etc., etc. Because so much of the research performed on the Busch and Cook Campuses is chemistry based (regardless of the specific departments or research centers in which it is carried out), "Chemical Abstracts" is one of the most heavily used print reference works in the Science Libraries, and as an accommodation for our users, duplicate subscriptions have been maintained at LSM and the Chemistry Library for many years. Now, however, as a result of a long term trend in budgetary austerity, one of these subscriptions must be sacrificed: starting in 1996, only a single subscription will be retained (at the Chemistry Library) to serve the chemistry research needs of the Busch and Cook Campuses.

The Douglass Library maintains a residual chemistry monograph collection which was acquired in prior years, but it recently ceased collecting in this subject area.

Until 1995, the Newark Chemistry Department housed a small Chemistry Library that was severely limited in capacity but which maintained a basic collection of chemistry journals, and reference works, including "Chemical Abstracts". However, this collection has now been absorbed into the Dana Library.

Finally, the Robeson Library, on the Camden Campus, has a very modest chemistry collection, suitably scaled to fit the academic program there.

B. COLLECTION GUIDELINES

B.1. Language Guidelines

English has increasingly become the international language of science, and chemistry is no exception. Virtually all materials currently purchased for Rutgers in the field of chemistry are in English. Some of the older back issues of important reference works such as Beilstein or Gmelin, or journals such as Angewandte Chemie are in German, but even these publications produced English versions in the years following World War II. Older works in the French language have an even smaller representation in our collections.

B.2. Chronological Guidelines

The primary emphasis is on publications which focus on current or ongoing research programs. Currency is vital in the sciences: Scientists working at the leading edge of their fields want to know as soon as possible what other colleagues (and possible competitors) are reporting about related research efforts. However, chemists, in particular, are also concerned with tracing research concepts as far back in time as possible in the literature, extending even into the previous century in some cases. Therefore, long backruns of journals are of major importance in this field.

B.3. Geographical Guidelines

Chemistry is a worldwide activity, so no geographic restrictions are followed.

B.4. Treatment of Subject

The Chemistry Library is defined as a research library, whose primary function is to support ongoing scholarly work in chemistry or chemistry related programs, by faculty, students, and staff throughout the University. Ideally, our goal is to collect any and all research oriented publications which span the entire field of chemistry. This broad spectrum approach to collecting is particularly important in chemistry because of the high degree of "interconnectedness" (or interdisciplinarity) that characterizes this science. For example, works on analytical chemistry will be used by chemists or scientists in many other disciplines. Similarly, theoretical principles developed by physical chemists may be applied to inorganic or organic chemistry research problems as well as to work in the field of ceramics or materials science or electrical engineering; and synthetic methods developed in the field of organic chemistry can be extremely important in various aspects of biochemical or pharmaceutical R&D, etc., etc. Unfortunately, increasingly onerous budgetary restrictions coupled with a disconcertingly high and persistent inflation rate for publications in the field of chemistry have made the attainment of this ideal an impossible dream. Therefore, as a practical matter, collection development in the field of chemistry at Rutgers has, of necessity, been forced to become ever more restrictive, focusing increasingly on those research areas which have the strongest representation among our science faculty.

B.5. Types of Materials

Research oriented periodicals, monographs, and reference works comprise the bedrock of the Chemistry Library collection. Because of the vast size of the chemistry literature, which, in its modern form (more or less) covers a time span of nearly 200 years, scientists working in this field have an essential need for bibliographic tools that will permit them to locate needed information in an efficient manner. The premier "information locating tool" in this field is "Chemical Abstracts": This publication has served as an increasingly important key to the literature of chemistry worldwide since 1907. Other classical reference works such as Beilstein and Gmelin provide essential access to the older literature, extending well back into the early years of the last century. Encyclopedic works such as "Kirk-Othmer's Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology" or "Ullman's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry" are also highly useful as well as various more specialized products such as the "Encyclopedia of Polymer Science and Engineering". Collections of property data are also necessary, whether in the classical handbook format or in multi-volume sets, and a wide variety of chemical dictionaries are available to help define and explain chemical nomenclature and other terminology in use in this field. Various specialized review series are particularly valued by many chemists for the periodic updates they provide about recent work in specific areas of research (typically represented by titles such as, e.g., "Advances in ...." or "Progress in ..." or "Annual Review of ....", etc.). Publications which provide ready access to information about chemical hazards and laboratory safety are also extremely important.

Electronic access to information in the field of chemistry, whether via CD-ROM or online services, is growing in importance. Although the printed word still reigns supreme in this area of science, rapid improvements in communications hardware and software coupled with the promise of falling costs encourage the introduction of relevant new products and services at an accelerating rate.

Specifically excluded from this collection are popular or lay publications dealing with chemistry, elementary or introductory chemistry textbooks, and chemical business or marketing publications.

B.6. Strengths and Weaknesses

The recent series of annual budget cuts initially proved to be a mixed blessing. The first reductions were salutary to the extent that they forced us to determine in considerable detail which library resources the faculty valued most highly, and which were of more marginal interest. The early cuts also provided the impetus to eliminate certain redundancies which had built up over the years in the library system as a whole. However, the cumulative effect of a year-to-year string of such budgetary reductions begins to pose major threats to our core collections if this contractionary trend continues much longer. In the field of chemistry, our collection strategy is forced to be increasingly selective, tailored ever more finely to match available funding with faculty research needs and interests. Inevitably under such conditions, in-house information gaps are developing because needed or requested monographs can not be purchased, and new journals in fields important to Rutgers research science programs cannot be acquired, because of limited funding. Although the Chemistry Library is still considered essential and is highly regarded by the chemistry faculty, as well as chemical researchers from other academic science departments, there is also increasing concern about the future of the chemistry collection if funding support continues to dwindle.

At present, the Chemistry Library is totally dependent on print media information sources. As more and more chemistry resources become available in electronic format, this library must take all necessary steps to make them accessible either in addition to or as replacement for comparable print products. How this task can be accomplished in the face of further anticipated budgetary contraction is a matter for conjecture at this point.

Another major weakness is related to space limitations which restrict the physical size of the collection at the Chemistry Library and necessitate periodic transfers of material to the Annex: This is a continuing source of irritation to the faculty and other patrons, because inadequate shelf space mandates that journal back runs be limited to the most recent 20-25 years (in all but a handful of cases), with the balance of older materials shifted to the Annex.

LC NO.		SUBJECT CATEGORY	EXIST.	CURRENT	ASSIGNMENT
QC173-175		quantum theory/mechanics	3	3	Chem/PHYSCHEM/phys
QC437-491		polarization, spectra, lluminescence, x-rays, Moessbauer effect	4	4	CHEM/phys
QC611-612		high T. superconduct	4	4	CHEM/phys
QC762-763		nuclear magnetic resonance	4	4	CHEMCHEM/phys
QD1-69		general chemistry	3	3	CHEM/lsm
QD71-145		analytical chemistry	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD146-196		inorganic chemistry	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD241-262		organic chem., general	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD271-291		organic analysis	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD300-305		aliphatic compounds	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD320-327		carbohydrates	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD330-341		aromatic compounds	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD380-388		polymers, macromolecules	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD390-405		condensed benzene rings, heterocyclic compounds	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD410-412		Organometallic compounds	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD415-441		biological chemistry	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD450-505		physical & theor. chem., quantum chem., thermodynam., catalysis	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD506-508		surface chemistry	3	4	CHEM/lsm
QD510-536		thermochemistry	4	3	CHEM/lsm
QD537-549		liquids & colloids	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD551-571		electrochemistry, electrolysis	4	4	CHEM/lsm
QD601-655		radiochemistry	4	3	CHEM/lsm
QD701-731		photochemistry	4	4	CHEM
QD901-999		crystallography	4	4	CHEM/lsm
T55.3		hazardous chemicals	3	3	CHEM/lsm
TP200-248		chemical technology/ chemicals	3	3	CHEM/lsm