Calling All iPhone Users

If you are an iPhone user and would like free online access to DynaMed, please call me (415-206-6639) or email me (jgraham@sfghdean.ucsf.edu) asap. DynaMed is an evidence-based point-of-care tool that's updated daily. We'll be retaining our desktop access to this resource, but we had to drop our PDA version due to budget cuts. BUT...if you establish you iPhone online access before the end of the year, you'll be grandfathered or grandmothered in.

If you're interested, I'll provide you with a unique serial number which you can use to set up the access.

Cry for Help. HELLLLLLLP

I've spent hours sifting through and evaluating electronic book, journal, database and package offers from various content providers with the goal of spending the least amount of money on the most valuable online products available. I want to provide resources that nurses and other SFGH staff will find helpful and actually use in their clinical decision making, research, and coursework. I'm also trying to figure out what resources will best support our fledgling Magnet initiative. Okay, so I admit it. I need help. Obviously I've got some ideas, but I need your clinical expertise and years of experience in the field to help me decide what to purchase. Please contact me asap: jgraham@sfghdean.ucsf.edu

Print or Online

A patron (that's that we call library visitors) came in this morning looking for a print copy of Brenner & Rector's the Kidney. Turns out we have only the 2004 edition, and that we had hadn't purchased the 2008 edition. Oh dear! Or maybe not. We do have online access to the most recent edition of that book via UCSF Library's MD Consult, an electronic content aggregator I think of as an electronic "aggravator" because their PDFs take so long to load.

Aggravation aside, the question remains: does the library need to spend $400 on a new edition of this title? If we buy it, will you use it? Please advise.

Embase, anyone?

Recently I've run into a few researchers here at SFGH, (not really run into them, just talked to them) who are beginning new projects and need to do exhaustive literature searching. They can't risk missing any of the European biomedical literature that may not be included in Medline. They need access to a database called "Embase", the database formerly known as "Excerpta Medica"

UCSF's Parnassus Library does not license this resource. The Mount Zion library is the only UCSF affiliate that does, and will very kindly do literature searches for SFGH staff on request. My question is: should the SFGH library subscribe to this database? Is there enough demand out there to warrant the purchase? Would you use it if you had it? Let me hear from you!

Librarians as Educators

While I don't often take the time to read Library Journal, preferring instead to let them pile up on my desk so no one else can read them, I did notice one news item from the October 1, 2008 issue that struck me as significant. It referred to a faculty opinion survey called Ithaka's 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education that revealed an "...emerging disconnect between librarians' perceptions of their roles and the expectations and habits of the faculty they serve."

The study drew a lot of comment from academic librarians, among them Steven Bell of Temple University, who suggested that the next study should include librarian roles of educator and instructional partner along with the more traditional ones. Good thinking, Steven. I believe this is a area where librarians can make the greatest impact, both now and in the future, and in all types of libraries.

Paging Dr. Google

Interesting article in the International Herald Tribune about how the public uses the Internet for health information. And later Twitters about their treatment.

Don't Wanna Come to Class?

Would you like to get the scoop on PubMed but don't want to or can't take the time to come and sit in class? Well, here's a sneak preview of tomorrow's class: PubMed Basics

If you come to class, you'll get hands-on experience with some of PubMed's search features, and we'll show you how to get full text articles. But if you really can't make it, you can call 206-6639 to arrange an individual coaching session. We'll even come to your office or work space.

That Time of Year Again

Last fall we made the announcement that in order to fund online resources for both UCSF and SFGH affiliates, we planned to cut the library’s print journal subscriptions The decision was based on what we saw as dwindling use of print titles, rising subscription costs, and desire to fund electronic resources such as DynaMed, Nursing Reference Center, and online databases such as CINAHL and Medline with their accompanying full text journal content.

After we announced the cuts, we hunkered down to await the fallout. But aside from several requests to retain specific titles, the negative reaction never came. Is it true that our staff is so well served by existing electronic resources that current print subscriptions aren’t all that important any more…except maybe for browsing? If that’s not true, we need to hear from you because it’s that time of year again, and we’re planning more print journal cuts. Here are some of the print subscriptions that are on the chopping block but available online:

Academic Radiology
Annals of Emergency Medicine
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
Journal of Investigative Medicine
Pediatrics in Review
Scandinavian journal of Infectious Diseases
Seminars in Thrombosis and HemostasisTransfusion

Drug Error Finder

This just in from the U.S. Pharmacopeia people:
"As a service to healthcare practitioners, industry, consumers, and others, USP has developed a free tool for accessing drug names that have been identified with a medication error. USP's Drug Error Finder allows a user to search more than 1,400 drugs involved in look–alike and/or sound–alike errors. It not only lists the other drugs involved in a mix–up, but also designates the severity of the error where at least one report was received through USP's Reporting Programs. Use USP's Drug Error Finder*."

Clarification from NIH

This just in from NIH regarding methods of manuscript submissions: NIH Public Access web page . For more information, see the NIH public access FAQ.

Just How Happy ARE You?

This past spring we conducted our annual customer satisfaction survey. The only change we made in the content was the title. This year we called it the "Customer HAPPINESS Survey", a la Google who has an actual salaried person called the "Customer Happiness Manager". (We figured we couldn't go too far wrong copying Google.)

Day before yesterday someone, not a library staffer either, actually asked about the results of the above-mentioned survey. Only then did I realize I hadn't publicized them to anyone but the library staff. So for all those inquiring minds out there, here are some statistically significant findings:

• Frequency of use - Up by 13% in the frequent or relatively frequent library use category. This includes walk-in use as well as online electronic use of resources.
• Usefulness of services - This year, respondents found our provision of health information for patients and families 12.4% more useful, our classes for staff 10% more usful and our one-on one information retrieval coaching 8% more useful than they did last year. We're actually doing pretty much what we did last year, but more people are finding out about it.
• Overall satisfaction - The percentage of highly or mostly satisfied respondents increased from 46% to 68% with the Neutral/No opinion category decreasing by almost half. I was really glad about that because I feel better if people have at least some opinion about us, either good or bad. Speaking of bad: our hightly dissatisfied and mildly dissatified people are still out there and still represent 6% of all those who responded. I suspect some of those folks are just basically curmudgeonly or were just grumpy that day, but some did give us good feedback about things we need to change such as our printing set up. And it's good to know those things. That's what surveys are for.

Thanks to all who took the time to respond, and for those who didn't, you're in luck. You'll have another chance next year.

PubMed Central and You

Most people have not given a lot of thought to their relationship with PubMed Central...unless they're NIH-funded researchers, that is. What does PMC expect of you? Why is the law so confusing? Why is communication so difficult? NIH Public Access Policy expert and UCSF Librarian Marcus Banks will be at SFGH, Building 3, 5th Floor Library on August 6, 2008 between 4 and 5 p.m. to answer these and other troubling questions including tips to make sure you are in compliance with the law and completely out of jail. Marcus's talk is sponsored by UCSF's Division of Experimental Medicine.

DynaMed for All

Yes, you can now get a PDA version of DynaMed, an evidence-based point-of-care resource, on the device of your choice. Although I don't personally own a new iPhone, I understand it works beautifully on that machine, as well as on Blackberries (would that be Blackberrys?) and Smartphones. If you'd like to give it a whirl, please email me jgraham@sfghdean.ucsf.edu to get the necessary serial number and include your SFGH or UCSF affiliation information.

Here's the scoop: http://www.ebsconewsletter.com/eletra/gow.cfm?z=dmweeklyupdate%2C282033%2Cb9mqlGw4%2C1066298%2Cbd6r91r

RSS and Why You Should Care

There seems to be a difference of opinion. RSS is either going to revolutionize the way people receive new online content OR it's way too complicated for most of them to deal with. Another possibility: it may land someplace in the middle. I'm voting for that. I'm thinking a less complicated way to receive RSS feeds will emerge in the next several years and the old-style RSS will be voted off the island. At the very least, the feed aggregator part of it will get the boot.

Until an updated model comes along, however, RSS is the absolute best way to keep on top of new online content. The University of Wisconsin's Ebling Health Sciences Library has put a lot of work into the RSS section of their web site. They've collected the URLs for an incredible number of medical journals and arranged them both by specialty and alphabetically so that you can add them to a feed reader such as Bloglines. I just love librarians, don't you? BTW, if you're interested in looking at the current tables of contents for specific journals and don't understand any of the above, please give me a call at 415-206-6639. I'm standing by the phone. Sitting actually.

Overheard at MLA

A la Leah Garchik of the San Francisco Chronicle, here are some of the more memorable sound bites from the Medical Library Association Conference held in Chicago this past week:

"JetBlue takes the suckitude out of flying." I love that word. Couldn't wait to use it in a sentence. I'm already planning how to use it again in another sentence.

Moodle will be the most important learning management system in the future.

Want to adopt a sister library in a developing country? See the International Cooperation Section 's "Tips for sister Libraries" on the MLA web site: http://www.mlanet.org/

To find out about using RFID clickers in classrooms, go to http://www.turningtechnologies.com/

The personal health record (Google Health & Microsoft's Health Vault) is one of the most significant tech trends in healthcare today.

Huge display screens help people see the big picture.

Invite your IT people to your next strategic planning session...just don't let them run the meeting.

The "Medici Effect" says innovation takes place at the intersection of professions.

Good Book: Serious Play, by Michael Flange.

The QR (quick response) code - holds 8,000 bits of information and is the next generation bar code.

Unbound Central is a platform on which libraries can perch their content for handheld devices. And 65% of all physicians own them, devices that is.

Your job is to craft great library experiences - Andrew Zolli

Our Logo

Our Logo
Originally uploaded by joygraham45

So okay, i've got it now. just took a little futzing and now i can include photos from my flickr account in my blog. Here's the official logo from our esteemed library.

JIT for Medical Literature

The JIT or Just-In-Time concept is a major tenet of supply chain economics that’s been around for a while. Here’s how it goes: don’t order it, pay for it, or warehouse it before you really need it. Have on hand only what you need to make and ship what is currently on order. Computer technology has made it possible for businesses to put this theory into practice and save bundles of money in the bargain.

I’m thinking about how the JIT concept can be applied to the medical literature, as a response to or perhaps defense against the infamous information glut. BTW, I’m not advocating that you apply this theory to your leisure reading, everyone should feel free to range far and wide in that field. But in regards to your professional reading, the idea would be to read only what you need to on the topics that are of immediate concern to your current clinical, research, or academic interests.

PubMed and many other databases allow you to do just that in a jiffy. You do a nice, precise search in a specific area of interest and then save it. The technology will alert you by e-mail when anything new is published that meets those search parameters. When the topic is no longer of interest, you cancel the search alert without a second thought. You can also set up journal alerts and receive the table of contents of your favorite journals every time new issues are published.

The same thing can also be accomplished using RSS technology, which notifies you when your favorite web sites are updated. The orange RSS icon on a web site indicates that RSS is available, and you can set up an RSS feed using a free service such as Bloglines . Please call me (415-206-6639) if you’d like more information on that. I’ll give you just enough information to get started. Not more. I promise.

Go MedWorm

I still haven't quite grasped the whole Google Gadget thing yet and the real significance of mashups. It takes a while for this kind of thing to filter into the recesses of my reptilian brain. But once I get it, I really get it, and I'm an enthusiastic devotee of whatever it is. Once I understand how I can use it to my advantage, I'm converted.

The significance of Rollyo (Roll Your Own Search Engine) is just beginning to dawn. It allows you to search only those sites you select, creating your own, personal, made-to-measure search engine to suit your own needs or those of your clientele.

One thing I do know is that MedWorm, a site I found on David Rothman's blog, which I found as a result of searching for librarian blogs on Rollyo directed me to an article that answered a question I'd been working on for DAYS. The questioner was looking for some kind of benchmark for the amount of time nurses spend teaching hospital inpatients about their conditions. He really wanted this information in regards to CHF, but was willing to take any condition, and by the time I got through telling him how and why this information was impossible to find, he was willing to take someone's best guestimate. Well, I put in "duration" and "patient education" in the MedWorm search box, and up pops a systematic review describing studies with various lengths and schedulings of inpatient teaching. Yeah MedWorm! Yeah David Rothman! Yeah RollYo!

Moving Right Along...

I'm on assignment #7 already in the Medical Library Association's 8-week online social networking class. This one is about podcasts. Mostly how to receive them, not how to make them, although the latter is of interested to me as well.

As directed, I signed up for a free online account at http://www.odeo.com/ And sure enough, I found some really interesting content to listen to. I was initially seduced (but only briefly) by a talk on mindfulness and meditation from a Zen master, but then my conscience kicked in and I told myself, "This isn't work-related...whoever heard of mindfulness at work?"

As penance for straying off the path, I selected the productivity category and wound up listening to some interesting interviews with David Allen, author of "Getting Things Done". GTD seems to be sort of a "meme", see assignment #3. Interview # 5 about e-mail was especially valuable, with the interviewer suggesting that you touch each e-mail only once and then "liberate" it, or take some action on it, so you don't wind up filing, scrolling, fiddling or otherwise messing with previously-read messages. I knew that...now why can't I just do it? Here's the link to that podcast: http://odeo.com/audio/2269951/view

Ghosts or Guests?

What do you do if you want to promote and publicize your product and you're not a recognized authority? Easy. You get someone who IS a recognized authority to write what you tell them to or ask them to lend their name to an article you wrote.

In the following NPR podcast, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89695722&sc=emaf commentator and physician Douglas Kamerow tells us how the pharmaceutical industry does this very thing all the time by arranging for guest-authored or ghost-authored publications. Kamerow estimates that 10 to 15% of articles in the medical literature are guest authored or ghost authored! It's worth a 4-minute listen.

Collaboratively Cooking and Dishing Up Documents

This week's social networking tools class calls for experimenting with various online office tools to create and share documents collaboratively. I didn't realize there were so many choices of ingredients, cookware and serving dishes available. I personally liked the Zoho presentation. It was colorful and satisfying. http://zoho.com/ It's a complete meal, prix fixe (it's free.) No ordering a la carte.

Google Docs was also tasty, http://docs.google.com/ I created a blueberry-colored folder and put some documents in it. Yum. But for some reason I found it less satisfying than Zoho. Microsoft Office Live http://home.live.com/?mkt=en-us flavor didn't appeal to me at all. But maybe it was because by that time, I'd had a bellyful of online office tools. All this is purely a matter of taste, of course, and we know that there is no accounting for some people's taste.

Social Bookmarking

My course assignment this week is to investigate the usefulness of web-based social bookmarking services such as del.icio.us. Our Web 2.0-savvy staff at the Barnett-Briggs Medical Library has already investigated and found it good. We use our communal account and add to it constantly. I think bundling is the next step. I'm not sure how to do that, but I noticed it on the SJSU del.icio.us site and think it's essential if you have more than say 50 tags.

At the university library where I worked several jobs ago, Marilyn, the librarian in charge of reference desk organization, had created an elaborate system of favorites on IE on the reference desk computer. Man, was she good. She categorized, or "bundled" as del.icio.us calls it, the sites in a very logical way. Very quickly I came to rely on it to answer questions. It was especially helpful for new staff and those of us who didn't work the desk very often.

Climbing into the wayback machine I vaguely remember a file of 3x5 cards we called the I&R File (information and referral file) that contained references to sources of information such as community agencies, services, other libraries, and also had the answer to obscure reference questions such as: "what does ONT stand for on wooden spools of thread?" Answer: Our New Thread. Now I'm really dating myself. Hardly a person is now alive (let alone capable of typing) who remembers those pre-Internet days.

I understand your pain BUT I do not share it

Here's a blog post from a Harvard Medical School PhD student complaining about the user-unfriendliness of PubMed: http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/U2929A0EA/2008/03/22/i-am-not-yelling-not-out-loud She's right, of course, PubMed is complex. But then so is her field of expertise, cell signaling and gene transcription. Why does she expect PubMed to be simple? You know why, because Google is simple, and Google sets the standard for search engines. But consider this: PubMed has powerful search features that allow for precise retrieval of information, for finding needles in haystacks, for separating the sheep from the goats, for executing complex search strategies. Those are things that Google does not do with the same consistency and predictability. So maybe this student would benefit from investing a bit of time learning the capabilities and complexities of the world's largest biomedical database.

Serious Stuff Here

Yes, joining Facebook really is part of an assignment for my Medical Library Association Social Networking Tools class. I had some peculiar responses to the Facebook invitations I sent, and they seem to be stratified by age group. One of my younger co-workers had invited me to join Facebook several months ago, so I was already signed up. My daughter responded to my invitation immediately, setting up her own profile and populating it with photos from her recent honeymoon in Austrailia and Bali. An older co-worker responded by asking me to send the invite to her personal e-mail. Ouch. A third older friend didn't respond electronically, but later asked me in a phone conversation if he'd have to put in personal information for all to see.

These are only 3 data points, but they seem to be pointing to an age-related phenomenon. Another experience I had with wikis: I tried to get the women in my family to participate in a creative writing wiki because, of course, we're all very clever and have interesting things to say. I was warned (by someone from the generation even older than mine) that this would be dangerous because of the identity theft problem. I know that sometimes kids reveal too much information and are pounced on by predators, but I think the new social networking paradigm asks people to examine their worldview from an Einsteinian perspective: Is the world essentially a friendly place or is it not. The answer to that may determine whether you're a social networker or whether you are not.

Flu Pandemic Wiki

When I first saw the URL I thought it was someone sniveling about their latest illness, but i went to http://www.fluwikie.com/ (yes, that's wiki with an "e") and found out it's an entirely serious site devoted to surveillance of H5N1 avian flu. It includes data from all sorts of national, international and statewide oganizations. It seems to be very authoritative, although I had a heck of a time figuring out who the editors were. I guess that's what makes a wiki so very wiki-like. It's very democratic...all contributors are equally authoritative, or appear to be.

On another note: it occurred to me that this site and/or others like it will probably become very important in the days and years to come. It's like they say about earthquakes and San Francisco: "It's not a question of IF, but WHEN."

Librarians With Laptops

Beware of librarians carrying laptops. They're like door-to-door evangelists, no offense door-to-door evangelists. They want to raise your information consciousness for your own good and the good of humankind. If you let them, they can totally take up an hour of your time helping you with evidence-based literature searching, setting up email current awareness alerts, managing your citation lists, or with whatever else you have going on in regards to medical literature. Luckily, there aren't too many of them, only Terri and Joy here at SFGH. Forewarned is forearmed.

Va-Room

As part of the Medical Library Associations online Web 2.0 class I'm currently enrolled in, I've been assigned to add at least one post to my blog each week for the next eight weeks. Nothing like hitting the ground running. Welcome to the reality school of blogging, where it becomes clear to us blogging bootcamp recruits that having a viable, dynamic web site means posting regularly. No waiting for inspiration to strike. No time management excuses or whining about higher priorities. No leaving your blog to languish by the wayside of the information superhighway. Just get it in gear and go.

Evolution in teaching

Interesting editorial in the Feb. 6, 2008 issue of JAMA. Written by an attending physician regarding how the information revolution has changed his approach to teaching interns and residents, he observes, " I increasingly find myself teaching less about the current state of information and more about how things have changed and how our understanding of an illness or treatment has evolved to where it is currently.... I am more likely to point out how scanty the evidence actually may be when making a decision." He sees his role as helping to integrate and synthesize overwhelming amounts of clinical data and interpret them in the context of the patient as a whole and complex individual. Here's the link if you want to read the article: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/299/5/497?etoc

Book Sale

Staff is pretty much recovered from the library's first annual "Clean Sweep Book Sale" held January 23-25th on the second floor of the Barnett-Briggs Medical Library. Although the tumult and shouting has died, one question remains: "Will there be a second annual Clean Sweep Book Sale?"

Polishing up my crystal ball with my soft chamois cloth reserved for this purpose, I would say the answer is "A definite maybe". In other words, I don't have a clue. Although we took in over $1200 in the three days of the sale, and managed to donate all but $50 of that to SFGH's Volunteer Program (refreshments took their toll), the future of the book sale remains murky at best. In January of 2009 the second floor of the library may no longer be part of the library. It may be turned into an Information Commons, a possibility I heartily endorse, or put to some other purpose which I endorse less heartily. Since one of my major objectives in holding the sale was to raise awareness regarding the existence of the library, having the sale in a location other than the library might not have the same consciousness-raising effect.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that everyone needs to come to the library to check out books and read journals and all that other good stuff. I would consider it a huge success if people NEVER came to the library but knew about all the online books, journals, and databases that the library licenses and pays for AND knew how to access it from their homes and offices without ever setting foot in the good old Barnett-Briggs. Maybe they could just IM us from time to time to tell us how much they appreciate our content.

Poll

Opinion Polls & Market Research

I'm playing with the Vizu poll application, thinking it could be used with interesting results in a blog or a wiki. I'm a little confused about the spacing of the text vis a vis the poll text box. We'll see how it turns out when I publish.

What were they thinking?

Alert NYT reader and Florida hosital librarian Patti Reynolds
brought this important news item to the attention of the MedLib-L listserv.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/nyregion/09dead.html?_r=1&em&ex=1200200400&en=82dcdb8fa84ead1b&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

Picture this: two guys trying to steal the proceeds of a dead guy's payroll check by wheeling his dead body seated in an office chair into a check cashing business. Maybe they thought no one would notice? We're talking New York here, you know.

She'll Google That - Rant

A nursing faculty member at an Australian University was complaining in the December, 2007 issue of the AORN Journal that when she did her usual Google searching for data on incidence of accidently retained sponges, she got waaaaay too many results. What a surprise. (Dripping sarcasm). Her solution? Use Google Scholar, and oh my, was that better! (More sarcasm). Only 231 hits. But she was thrilled because the search contained mostly credible resources and went back 30 years.

This is the kind of report that makes librarians crazy, or crazier than we usually are. And it's published in AORN, one of the world's top nursing journals. We're concerned. We wonder: how'd she get to be in a position of teaching future nurses doing Google searching with nary a nod to the concept of database searching? You know, databases such as Medline, the world's largest biomedical database with 15 million citations and indexing back to 1950, and CINAHL, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health, the world's most comprehensive indexing and abstracting database for nursing literature?

Poor baby. How upsetting that her Google search yielded too many hits and "...an eclectic range of information and 'facts'" Does she not have a clue that databases such as PubMed have search features such as subject headings, subheadings and limit capabilities that allow you to hone your search to get the precise retrieval you're looking for?

But wait...there's more. She's saying that the "World's best books and scholarly journals will become increasingly available on your computer monitor at the touch of a key..." Well, sure. But whom does she think is going to be paying for them...the Easter Bunny? Unless the publishing industry suddenly decides it no longer wants or needs to be in business, these resources will have to be paid for. Guess who's paying for them now?? LIBRARIES, THAT"S WHO. Ok, I'm calming down. I'll stop shouting now.

My New Hero

Julie Stielstra, alert reader of the New York Times and hospital librarian in Winfield, Illinois, recently brought this article to the attention of the MedLib-L, a medical librarians' listserv:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/arts/31rese.html?pagewanted=print

It describes how David Smith, reference librarian at the New York City library affectionately known as the "NYPL" (say it), has given so much really valuable reference help to so many people, some of whom are famous authors. The article refers to him as "Librarian to the Stars". He says he used to be shy and retiring, but at some point later in life (age 45) got to be good at schmoozing. All right, David! David has become my new role model. If you'd like to help me out with that, come by the Barnett-Briggs Medical library and ask me for reference assistance or email me at jgraham@sfghdean.ucsf.edu. You don't have to be famous, but it wouldn't hurt.