Libraries Bigger than Cupcakes?

Linda Holmes of NPR's Monkeysee blog thinks that libraries will be the subject of the next big pop-culture wave, right on the heels of the cupcake craze. She thinks this because:

---Libraries give away things for free: unlike Netflix and Kindle who are friendly but want money for their stuff.

---Librarians are nerdy and actively uncool: they know things and are often openly feisty. They may be slightly subversive and don't follow the party line. Pop culture is now embracing such a perspective. Look at the picture of Linda on her blog and you'll see that Linda is a bit on the nerdy side herself, although certainly not actively uncool.

---Libraries are green and local: they reuse books, are anti-chain store, and are down home and folksy, which is all good per Linda.

---Libraries serve the public: Yes, the SFGH Barnett-Briggs Library is OPEN TO THE PUBLIC and open to all that that entails, including unpredictability. Sometimes the unpredictability creates drama resulting in calls for assistance from the Institutional Police. Thank you, Institutional Police.

For the above reasons, librarians here at the BBML are preparing now and will be ready for the coming wave of popularity.

Research Raven Rocks

I noticed a snippet of news in a library newsletter the other day about a web site called "ResearchRaven" . What got my attention was not the idea or anything related to the content, but the location: Corvallis Oregon. That snagged me because I lived in Corvallis for ten years in the 1980's, and worked as the one-and-only medical librarian at Good Samaritan Hospital for six of the ten.


So I spent some time looking at ResearchRaven and was increasingly blown away by its utility, functionality, aesthetics, and overall coolness. Developed by librarian Hope Leman (I knew her father, Craig Leman, a surgeon) at Samaritan Health Services Center for Health Research and Quality, it's a free service that aims to provide researchers with up-to-the-minute publishing, meeting, and funding opportunities. Using RSS technology (Feedburner to be exact), it aggregates a variety of information sources in the medical and physical sciences into one well-designed user interface. Users can specifiy their area(s) of interest and be informed via RSS when new opportunities are announced.

As librarians know, this is the type of information that's difficult to ferret out, and if it's not current, it's not worth much, so having it combined in one place is real treasure. Not to mention the fact that it's free...or did I just mention that?

Thank you Hope. Well done!

Smartphones in Health Care

According to a study published this month by the California HealthCare Foundation, two-thirds of physicians and 42% of consumers used smartphones in 2009. The report, written by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, titled "How Smartphones Are Changing Health Care for Consumers and Providers" focuses on how smartphones are being used in health care.

According to the report, a whopping 50% of iPhone apps for clinicians, medical students, and consumers are categorized as "Medical Reference" apps, and although the largest percentage of those are student study guides (19%), medical literature and drug reference apps together comprise the second largest percentage (13%).

Which brings me to the point of this post: Did you know that the SFGH library has a license to DynaMed, one of the highest-quality point-of-care medical/drug apps available today for physicians? It's relatively comprehensive (3,000 topics), has clearly designated levels of evidence, active links to cited articles, and great navigation for small-screen devices. Best of all, it's free to clinicians at SFGH. Take a look at the full version on the library's web site, and see if you'd like to install it on your phone or PDA. If so, email me (jgraham@sfghdean.ucsf.edu) and let me know what type of mobile device you have. I'll email you back a serial number and instructions for your specific device.

Print Textbooks: Going the Way of the Dodo?

I was working on my semi-annual print medical book order the other day and realized there was a question running in the background of my mind. It was asking "ummm, exactly why is it that you are ordering these astronomically-expensive paper/print books that very few people are ever going to read anyway?"

So I had to stop and remind myself of some of the reasons for having print books, as opposed to electronic books, in today's medical library. Here are a few I came up with, in order of importance:

• Some people want to read print books rather than electronic books. They find the paper, the smell, the browseability, something about the esthetics of print books appealing. Although I don't feel that way about textbooks or books I'm using for reference, I do feel that way about leisure reading books, and that gives me justification for purchasing medically-related non-fiction print books such as Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto, Paul Linde's Danger to Self, and Rebecca Skloot's Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks . These are books I want to read from cover-to-cover, maybe even curl up and get comfortable with.


• The second reason is regulatory in nature. The Joint Commission requires that hospital libraries provide access to current reference books in all medical specialty areas during times that computer networks and electrical systems are down. So this means you've gotta have... guess what? Yup, good old-fashioned astronomically-expensive print medical reference books AND a flashlight.

After explaining that to myself, I carried on with my book order.

Archives

San Francisco General Hospital has a rich history. Pieces of it come to light every day as the heavy equipment unearths remnants of old foundations, water systems, ceramic tiles, walkways, etc. in preparation for the construction of a new building. It's a veritable archaeological dig out there.

Perhaps inspired by all the rebuild activity, a few of us have started talking about organizing some type of hospital archives. In offices and labs all over campus there are stashes of historic photos, art work, old lab notebooks, scrapbooks, and file folders containing newspaper clippings and other memorabilia that will be lost unless we take steps to collect and preserve them now.

Our unofficial archives committee is working on a plan to archive this material in some yet-to-be-determined format. Maybe it will be a presentation scrapbook to be used for fund raising, maybe it will be a digital archive accessible online for all to see. Maybe it will include materials we haven't yet identified as important, and maybe it will be organized in a way we haven't even thought of yet. It's definitely a work in progress, and will probably always will be...because that's the nature of an archive.

Postcard from edge...

From the edge of Lake Mudd, that is. The landscape outside the library's workroom windows in Building 30 changes dramatically every day, and although we're growing weary of weeks of rain, the bad weather has brought us a new water feature to look at...Lake Mudd. Perhaps later in the year, we'll rename it Lake Dust. Then, if all goes according to plan, it will become even deeper and lined with cement, rebar, pilings, tie-backs etc., the foundation of the new hospital. This is exciting business. We never know exactly what landscapes will confront us when we come to work in the morning.

Baaaaad Thoughts

While Twittering this morning I came across a report that brings scientific evidence to the proposition that bad thoughts cause bad outcomes. DO NOT have these thoughts, or have as few of these thoughts as you possibly can.