PubMed...Half Full or Half Empty?

PubMed, the National Library of Medicine's interface to Medline, recently announced proudly that it just added the 20 MILLIONTH citation to its database. It's considered to be the world's largest and probably most important strictly biomedical database, although there are other databases that are larger in scope that contain more records. What's interesting to me is not the size of the database, but the fact that 3 million of those citations have full text connected with them, a fact that was buried in the second paragraph of the announcement.

This could be seen as a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty situation, although I choose to see it as a half-full glass, or to be more precise, a .15 full glass, probably because I remember the days when there was zero full text connected to PubMed, and even the days when there was no PubMed.

Obviously, the Open Access movement has a long way to go, that is, .85 of the full glass. I don't want to put publishers out of business, but I do think something needs to change in their business models in order to facilitate scientific information discoverability and collaboration. Technology has provided the means for access, and the time is ripe for a scholarly publishing paradigm shift. Next time you're wondering what journal to publish your scientific paper in consider Biomed Central journals. Let's get that glass filled up.

Review of the iPad on Medical Rounds

For all you proud iPad owners: here's a physician's take on the practicality of using the device on patient rounds. According to him, the availability of wireless connectivity is crucial. What's your experience been on the wards here? Please comment.

Assessing the Human Health Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Institute of Medicine Workshop - Institute of Medicine

Thought you might be interested in looking at a video summary of the IOM workshop, held June 22-23, 2010. Assessing the Human Health Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Institute of Medicine Workshop - Institute of Medicine

Text-A-Librarian @ SFGH

Responding to the increasing popularity of texting over phoning, the Barnett-Briggs Medical Library has begun a new Text-A-Librarian service. "Why", you may ask, "would I ever want to text a librarian?" Since you asked, let me digress and tell you a story about the olden days, that is, pre-Google days, when librarians provided what was quaintly called "Reference Service".

We had a collection of books quaintly called "the reference section". These books consisted of now-antiquated publications such as directories, almanacs, yearbooks, gazeteers, encyclopedias, dictionaries, indexes, etc., and we pretty much knew what was in each one of them. So when someone asked a question, which they did frequently, we would go straightaway to the reference section, pull off the most likely book and look in the index to find the answer.

Librarians would deal with homework questions, settle bar arguments, such as the number of home runs hit by "X" in the World Series of 19XX, advise homemakers on the correct formulation of a bouquet garni for the evening's stew, etc., or show authors how to figure out which publishers would most likely be interested in their manuscripts. In the case of medical librarians in those pre-Medline days, we would look up journal articles on specific topics in something called "Index Medicus", which came out monthly and were cumulated into a huge annual volume. Considering the size of the print, it was a wonder we ever found anything.

Back to the present day and the original question: Why, when you have all the resources of the Internet at your veritable fingertips and all the power of Google at your command, would you ever need or want to ask a librarian a question? It's because you have all the resources of the Internet at your veritable fingertips and all the power of Google at your command. You have access to so much information that, as the Big Blue Book says, you realize that your life has become unmanageable, at least as far as the information part goes.

Librarians can narrow down those 2,345,644,677 Google hits and give you only those that are recent, authoritative, and applicable to your question. You want only evidence-based articles? Maybe only systematic reviews? Editorials? Only articles by enzymologists in Zaire if, in fact, there are enzymologists in Zaire? Need a handout on smoking cessation in Serbo-Croatian? Interested in up-to-date information on the link between anti-perspirants and breast cancer, or the lack of a correlation?

Those are all good reasons to text us. We are standing, well sitting actually, by the phone ready to text you back with good answers to your questions, thus saving you hours of precious time and those uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty that can accompany unanswered questions. Text to 66746 and start your text with the keyword sfgh. Do it now!

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.