Free is Good

A Springer journal might not be your first choice of journals to publish in, but here's some news that might influence your decision: Springer Publishing Company has just signed an agreement with University of California's Digital Library that allows for free open access publishing for any and all of their many journals. Well, it's not exactly free because the publishing cost has been rolled into UC's journal licensing agreement, but it's free to you as author. Here are more details of what Springer is calling its Open Choice plan

Jing...a Kewl New Tewl

In about 2 nanoseconds I learned how to capture a screen shot using a free media sharing tool called Jing. This little gizmo (technical term) has far-reaching implications for creating online tutorials on the fly and for delivering customized desktop support.

Jing allows you to do static screen shots and annotate them, like the PubMed screen in the above example as well as create videos of your mouse movements and share them with people. Now I'm thinking, "Why did I spend all that time and energy on Captivate?" The answer: so I can make tutorials that are more than five minutes long, which is Jing's limit. That's okay. Most peoples' attention span is about that long anyway, mine included.

What, Me Wiki?

Some people, old people that is, will recognize the above image as Alfred E. Newman. His picture was always on the cover of Mad Magazine, which you smuggled to school when you were in the 4th grade. It was a very subversive thing. It would definitely be confiscated if seen by a teacher, and could even cause you to be kicked out of class. Alfred E. Newman's motto was: "What, me worry?

Keeping in mind the title of this article, can you guess where I got the above image? Yup...Wikipedia. If you're like most people, you've heard of Wikipedia but you don't know that much about it and wonder "Just what is this weird wiki-thing anyway?" The word comes from the Hawaiian language and means quickly, which is surprising in itself because Hawaiians hardly ever do anything quickly. Why would they need a word for it?

A wiki is a web site that anyone can read and/or contribute to. Depending on your permissions, it allows you to add, delete, or reorganize content, all without benefit of HTML or web editing skills. Its strength lies in its use as a collaborative tool.

The following are some reasons you might want to participate in a wiki:

• We need to use new and better ways to create, share, store, and retrieve knowledge, especially during the Magnet process, upon which this hospital has embarked.
• Wikis work well with any shared governance model because they make collaborating to create content really easy and sometimes even fun.
• Wikis can be private, that is, open only to members of the organization. In addition, within any given wiki, some pages can be open to all and some can be private depending on the nature of the content.
• Wikis offer content as well as discussion pages.
• Wikis break down silos, a cliche meaning organizational divisions.
• Wikis distribute the editing workload and take the pressure off the web master who probably never wanted the job in the first place.

Please leave a comment if you'd like additional information on the advantages of wikis over email or organizational intranets. This post is already way too long but hey, why should I worry?

It's Official: Librarian is a Cool Career

It must be true. I read it in U.S. News and World Report. According to a December 15, 2008 article Librarian is one of the top 30 professions for 2009 in terms of job outlook, job satisfaction, difficulty of training, prestige, and pay. Another semi-interesting factoid: special librarians are especially cool. A special librarian is someone who doesn't work in an academic or public library, so this would include yours truly, having worked in medical libraries for what is now decades.

I was interested to see that the article lists "Health Informatics Specialist" as one of "13 Ahead of the Curve Careers". This confirms my hunch that the combination of medical librarianship and health informatics is where our field is headed. I always like it when my hunches are confirmed, especially by such a highly-revered news source.

Just this week, I found myself encouraging a UC Berkeley undergraduate who was conducting informational interviews at the hospital to consider the Medical Librarian/Health Informatics option. As I was making the pitch, a musical version of William S. Borrough's Words of Advice for Young People kept running through my mind. I'm always surprised at how helpful (ahem) my subconscious is at suggesting songs that suit the situation. Maybe I should give the whole thing some more thought.