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.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
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
"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
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Our Logo
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.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, April 28, 2008
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!
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!
Friday, April 25, 2008
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
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
Monday, April 21, 2008
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.
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.
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