Happy Fourth of July!

Have a happy and safe Fourth of July !

News, Searching the Medical Literature: Two Expert Opinions on Searching, or PubMed and Beyond

Today is a great day to highlight the recent posts of two fellow medical bloggers:  the first is from Laika’s MedLibLog, written by a Dutch research-scientist/medical-librarian; the second post is from Life in the Fast Lane, a blog written collectively by a group of Australian physicians.

Each author has written definitive posts about the mechanics – and utility – of searching the medical literature, and evaluating what has been found.

These posts should be seen as instant classics – and required reading for new graduate students in medicine, dental medicine or biomedical research or just about anyone with an interest in finding more-pertinent clinical information (in less time).

Their descriptive clarity in explaining what to search, and how to search is pitch-perfect.

Thank you – Laika and SandNSurf – for writing them!

Please read:

• Laika’s MedLibLog: 10+1 PubMed Tips for Residents (and Their Instructors) (Jun 30 2009)

• Life in the Fast Lane: Medical Search for Physicians (Jun 16 2009).

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Next: Following are several quite different compilations of medical information resources written by librarians.

Elena Giglia, a medical librarian from Central Library of Medicine, University of Turin, Italy,  wrote in 2007 an excellent overview of the medical literature entitled “Beyond PubMed: Other Free Biomedical Databases“.  This 11-page article was published in the European Journal of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (Europa Medicophysica) – Vol. 43(4):563-9 (Dec 2007). It is available online for anyone to read.

Ms. Giglia is the author of a very recent article, “Medline/PubMed revisited: new, semantic tools to explore the biomedical literature“, published June 2009 in Eur J Phys Rehabil Med – Vol. 45(2):293-7 (subscription required).

Law librarian Gloria Miccioli wrote a summary of medical sources targeted for legal professionals, entitled  “Researching Medical Literature on the Web” (published Sept 22 2008), found on LLRX.com.

The LLRX website also offers a list of links for librarians (or others) doing legal research.

My own Home Week: Evidence Based Medicine Resources page on Libguides.com was created – and is updated annually – as a source-sheet for third-year medical students at UCHC as they rotate throug h their clinical clerkship year.

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Finally:  Librarians working in academic health science libraries offer a variety of digital training tutorials or subject lists for orienting their students, residents and faculty to the technical aspects of searching the literature of medicine.

A quick search on Google for “tutorials searching medical literature” brings up an eclectic group of 968,000 retrievals.

The same search using Bing f0und 1,530,000 well-filtered retrievals.

News, Blogging, Health Information Online: Healthcare Bloggers Code of Ethics

Image credit: http://medbloggercode.com/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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My thanks to the good folks at Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics who recently added the EBM and Clinical Support Librarians@UCHC blog to their lengthy list of medical bloggers.

Here is the written Code of Ethics promoted by this non-profit, volunteer group.

Link here to view the newest additions of medicine bloggers, or patient bloggers, endorsed by HBCE (updated June 26 2009).

News, Public Health, Disease Prevention: Saturday, June 27 is National HIV Testing Day

Saturday, June 27 2009 is National HIV Testing Day

Photo credit: http://www.hivtest.org – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

An annual event co-sponsored by the National Association of People With AIDS (NAPWA) and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), this public health promotional effort encourages sexually-active Americans to be tested each year for infection with the HIV virus or other sexually transmitted diseases.

A separate CDC website at HIVTest.org allows a person to type in their individual zip-code or city/state location which will then bring up a directory of local sites where testing services will be available on Saturday.

Another means of finding local test site information is to call this toll-free phone number:   1-800-CDC-INFO (or 1-800-232-4636).

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A recently published report in MMWR – Vol. 58 (24);661-665 (June 26 2009) recaps the ill-effects of “Late HIV Testing in 34 States, 1996-2005″.

Here is an excerpt from that report – and one which represents a very sobering statistic for any epidemiologist: “Current estimates suggest that 21% of HIV infections in the United States are undiagnosed.”

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CDC sponsors a related consumer-health information source page called “Nine and A Half Minutes” (for the estimated frequency of new STD infections among Americans).  Here is a screenshot of that site:

Photo credit: http://www.hivtest.org – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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A 14-page HIV Testing Fact Sheet (in English or Spanish language) is available from CDC at this link.

Finally, below is a short list of other statistical or factual sites for current sexual health information:

• CDC HIV/AIDS webpage and AIDS.gov
• NPIN (National Prevention Information Network) from CDC
• Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) – AIDS
• MMWR – Main Index Page
• The Global Network of People Living With HIV
• World Health Organization – HIV/AIDS
• US News & World Report reported on June 26 2009 that “…50% of HIV-positive U.S. teens don’t know they’re infected“.  Read it here.
  

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News: Congratulations To These Special Graduates

Blogging lately has taken a back-seat to real life, as the Creaky family continues to spawn brainy graduates.

Two ceremonies over the past weeks is truly something to celebrate!

Class of 2009

Congratulations, KHam and PHam – You’ve worked hard and done well!

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Back to blogging next week!

The Friday Post #34: Computers as Art, Vernal Pools and Salamanders

Medical student and artist Satre Stuelke creates illustrations using radiological techniques, such as this image of a Mac iBook.

It’s so pretty!

Photo-Source Credit: http://satre.itrnet.com/radiology_art/html/about.htm -  All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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My computer at work has been way, way out of service lately.

More postings to follow after it is feeling better!

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And in the interim: It’s been raining practically every day in the Northeast. We are actually becoming grateful for 4 or 5 minutes of sunshine daily! One day last week I drove into my driveway and saw a spotted salamander clinging to the house. They like to play dead when you hold them, but after five minutes they slide away into the brush after your attention has waned.

This spring (in New England) has been excellent weather to observe vernal pool dwellers up close (like this site).  It has also a great year for those who photograph mushrooms!

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That’s the Friday Post for Jun 19 2009!  Stay dry, folks!

Open Access, Digital Libraries, E-Archives: Virtual Classics, Textbooks and Other Gems

This is the 300th post on the EBM & Clinical Support Librarians@UCHC blog.  Woot… please drop me a line and let me know how I’m doing!

Medical and dental students have one more exam to complete, and then will have a few well-deserved weeks of vacation.  They may even have time to read for pleasure.

A brief article entitled “Textbook Death Watch“ posted on Tech & Learning (May 1 2009) caught my eye, and that prompted an search-expedition for open access libraries of digital works available to anyone to use.  The list below is not meant to be inclusive… only representative.

A related article on the Wired section (free to all) from the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 13 2009) discusses the migration from ‘real’ books to digital archives at University of Oklahoma: at this link.  An article published in the Washington Post (May 19 2009) about the scope, reach and legal considerations of Google Books is worth a read.

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Digital Collections from Non-Academic Sources

• Many hours could be spent browsing through the collections from the Internet Archive website.  Here are a few links: Text Collection (1.4 million e-books),  Moving Images (links to 180,000 films, videos or movies), Maps of the States via the United States Geological Surveys, an archive of game videos and of course, the Wayback Machine which now contains “2 petabytes” of data!

• The Library of Congress has one of the largest archives in the world, and was an early adapter of digitization ~ here is a link to their Digital Collection & Programs website.

• A classic and long-lived source for E-Books: the Project Guttenberg website where 28,000 online books are available at no cost.

• WOWIO is a site for free texts, comics and graphics novels.  Their About page states that it is  “…the only source where readers can legally access high-quality copyrighted ebooks from leading publishers for free. Readers have access to a wide range of offerings, including works of classic literature, college textbooks, comic books, and popular fiction and non-fiction titles. “
  

• The Internet Public Library (IPL): Online Texts
• ReadPrint.com
• Planet E-Book provides online access to over 60 classic books.
• Bartleby.com is a true E-reference site, stocking many diverse works from writing guides, fiction, non-fiction, encyclopedias, verse and poetry, quotations – even Emily Post’s Etiquette.
• iBiblio.org
• Free E-Books.net
• Page by Page Books
• Online Books4Free

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A Collection of Digital or E-Text Collections hosted by Academic Institutions

• Librarians at the University of Texas Libraries have assembled an impressive list of online E-texts.

• University of Virginia EText Center: Collections provides access to 2,100 works.  There is also a Subject Collections page, such as a collection of Early American Fiction or the works of Shakespeare.

• The Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania.

• Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University have played an integral part in the creation of the Universal Digital Library which provides access to over 1,000,000 open-access books in a dozen languages, with mirror sites in China, Egypt and India.

• University of Michigan Libraries have recently put their 1,000,000 E-book online, a massive digitization project, in coordination with Google. For more information, link here.

• Duke University Libraries provides access to their digital collections here.

• Columbia University Libraries provides access to E-Books List (currently 617 titles available) and also through their larger Digital Collections page.

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A Few Audio Book-Sources

• Listen to Audio-Books in the public domain from LibriVox
• Open Culture: Audible Books and Podcasts
• The Spoken Alexandria Project
  

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Recommendations by Readers or Bloggers

• A list of “Life Changing Books” recommended by readers came from OpenCulture (published Aug 19 2007).  Note:  The titles are linked to Amazon but some of these titles on the  list are in the public domain and available through several of the E-book sites shown above (i.e., open access).

• Good Reads is a valuable website – type in a book title or author, and the site will “suggest” similar works.  For example, here is a list of novels about “Magical Realism” novels suggested by readers.

• Online Libraries: 25 Places to Read Books for Free

• ArtsLab: Nice E-Book Sites

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Hard to Describe Sites

• Dreaming Methods describes itself as “a fusion of writing and atmospheric new media that explores digital storytelling, imaginary memories and dream-inspired states“.  And their List of Links to other literary sites is worth visiting.

• We Tell Stories (digital fiction from Penguin Books UK) is part novel, part Google Maps.

• Yearning to write your own novel?  Visit National Novel Writing Month if you think you can write 50,000 words in 30 days.

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Finally, two sites not for enjoying literature as much as for savoring historical images.

• An archive of photographs cataloging Life in Western Pennsylvania (1840-1970) which contains 800 photographs and 12 films about the region.  Here is a glorious image of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – taken in 1932 – f0und on this site:

Image Credit:  http://www.lifeinwesternpa.org – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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• Calisphere (a digital library project for the State of California, hosted by the University of California-Berkeley), which is where I found this beautiful image (circa 1945):

Image courtesy of http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

The Friday Post #33: Online Journalism, Cartoons and the Prison Bus

Sorry for the considerable absence of blogging lately – it’s the end of the academic year and things have been piling up.

Here’s the Friday Post #33 for May 29, 2009.  And if it doesn’t stop raining every day here in Connecticut (and soon), more than a few of us are going to start to yell and scream!

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Part literary magazine/part interesting blog written by students from Northwestern University, here is an excerpt from a recent article on NorthbyNorthwestern, commenting on the precarious state of the current economy:

“ It comes as a huge surprise, then, that in the single most severe financial plunge since the Great Depression we, myself included, are more familiar with Facebook’s layout changes than with the principal events that truly affect our lives. It might not seem to matter to us just yet, but there will come a time when our own ignorance is going to bite us in the ass…. “

From “Stop Talking about the Recession and Start Understanding It” by Maura Brannigan (published on May 4 2009)

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Read Meet the Millenials on FLYP, a very stylish way to read news online.

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Another timely comic from xkcd:

Image Credit: http://xkcd.com/181/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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Is it hard to believe that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles turned 25 this year!?  Woot.

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Finally, here’s two photos of the prison bus heading to UConn Health Center, in the rain:

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Photos by Creaky (and Verizon)

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That’s the Friday Post for May 29 2009, folks.

Let’s hope for a sunny day – Have a great weekend!

Patient Counseling, End of Life Care, Medical Communications: When Delivering Bad News, Speak Carefully

” The life of a sick person can be shortened not only by the acts, but
also by the words or the manner, of a physician.  It is therefore a
sacred duty to guard himself carefully in this respect. ”

—American Medical Association, Code of Medical Ethics, 1847

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Physicians are trained to seek a cure for their patients, to deliver treatments, to act promptly yet with deliberation; much less time is spent during graduate medical education on how to deliver bad news to a patient or their family.

Unfortunately, communications about treatment failure, impending death or options for end-of-life care – including emotional or psychosocial issues – can be delivered by the physician in an incomplete, ambiguous or unintentionally insensitive manner.

Poorly chosen words complicate an already emotional and anxiety-charged scenario for the patient or their loved ones. Counseling family members after an unexpected or traumatic death is even more difficult for the care provider.

UCSF physician Stephen Z. Pantilat wrote a practical, thoughtful essay about doctor-patient communications at end of life, entitled “Communicating with Seriously Ill Patients: Better Words to Say“.  It was published in JAMA on Mar 25 2009 (Vol. 301, Issue 12, page 1279-1281).  (Note: Subscription necessary to view the text.)

Following is an excerpt from Dr. Pantilat’s article:

” Words matter. What clinicians say and how they say it hugely affects patients.  Communicating about emotionally and medically complex topics such as advance care planning, preferences for care, prognosis or death and dying is challenging.  Doing so requires clinicians to attend to their own and the patient’s cognitive reactions, tone, affect and nonverbal cues… Although poor communication may harm patients by leading to unwanted invasive procedures, generating unnecessary anxiety, or creating feelings of abandonment, good communication can improve outcomes for patients and their families by promoting shared decision making and addressing patient concerns”.

Excerpt from: “Communicating with Seriously Ill Patients: Better Words to Say” – JAMA, Vol. 301, Issue 12 (Mar 25 2009) – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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This 3-page article should be required reading for every third-year medical student before the beginning of their clinical clerkship year.

Over the next few weeks, I will post a brief series on learning to care for dying patients’ physical and emotional needs.

Congratulations to Our Graduates: UCHC Class of 2009

Congratulations and Best Wishes to the
UCHC Medical, Dental and PhD Students

Class of 2009

You’ve worked hard.

Graduation Day is Sunday, May 17, 2009!

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Here is what one medical student did to get rid of his short white coat:

Instructional Technologies, Teaching & Learning in Medicine, Web 2.0: Oncology, LibGuides and Delicious

Librarians at Lyman Maynard Stowe Library purchased a subscription to a course management system called LibGuides in August 2008.  It has proven to be a good investment.  Each of the librarians or instructors on the system can share – although we are geographically distant – in building on each others’ work, much like sharing of bookmark collections is enabled by Delicious.com.

LibGuides is an easy (user-friendly) system to learn.  Reference librarians here are using it exclusively for all their online course syllabi. We have now gone officially  “paperless” – no more piles of handouts for instructional sessions!  If you’d like to view individual UCHC Libguides, click here.

Access to individual subject pages is open to both subscribers and non-subscribers for the system; anyone in the world can search and view a LibGuide subject page provided that the author(s) of that guide have elected to make the page “public”.  According to Springshare, the owner of LibGuides, there are now 5oo libraries which subscribe.

This month I’ve been working on a LibGuide for 2nd year year medical and dental students who recently began a new segment in their curriculum called Human Mechanisms of Disease-Oncology and it is (finally) complete.

The page is a collection of oncology/cancer information resources, e-textbooks, clinical guidelines, atlases, cancer genetics, National Cancer Institute or American Cancer Society, cancer trials registry info, etc. (Link is here). There’s also a set of bookmarks on Delicious (called “Onc2009“) which I gathered to complement what is on the LibGuide and includes information for patients.

Earlier this week, while scanning through recently updated pages on LibGuides, I found a page on Pathology & Laboratory Medicine written by a health science librarian from Dana Medical Library at the University of Vermont.  Her page gave me links to several oncology textbooks to add to my Oncology list – because both institutions have subscription access to books via R2Library. In order words, our shared resources I might have missed adding these clinical textbooks to my page but because of Web 2.0 and sharing of information, I was able to see what other medical librarians have done thus making shared content that much more thorough and inclusive.  (Thank you, Ms. Delwich!).

P.S.  If you have comments or suggestions about other Oncology resources for clinicians to add to the pages, I would enjoy your feedback.

The Friday Post #27: Shakespearean Insults, Online Mistakes, Unlucky Friday the 13th

Tradition has it that bad things might happen on Friday the 13th. So here’s the Friday (the 13th) Post #27 for Feb 13 2009:

• Find a variety of unusual Old English insults on the website Shakespearean Insulter, where all quotes are taken from the collected works of William Shakespeare, such as: ” Thou warped rude-growing jolt-head!” or “Were I like thee I’d throw away myself.”  Thanks for the link, Kham!

• Just in time for Friday the 13th: A series on Flickr entitled Playing Dead… including this charming image (Number 294).   Here is Another Dead Librarian (thanks to Laika for that link).

• Friday the 13th decisions result in cautionary tales. A list about bad behavior online fr0m Switched relates this example from “Most Embarassing Online Mishaps“.  A bank intern called to say he wouldn’t be in to work that day due to a “family emergency”.  As it happened, he went to a party that day… and (dumbly) posted the photos of his party-attire on Facebook, where his boss saw them.  Yeah, so which one of us have never clicked the “Send” key by mistake?

• Did you know that there are over a dozen movies in the Friday the 13th series… and another one was released this week? Are you embarrassed to admit you’ve seen most of them? Eeek!  If you’re a cheesy horror movie fan, it is always difficult choosing between Jason and Freddy.  Anyway, here’s a feature article about a group of movie stars who acted in previous “Friday the 13th” films – from the New York Daily Post (Feb 13 2009).

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And that’s the Friday the 13th Post!  Take care and stay safe over a long weekend.

Blogs I Like: Pharmamotion

A physician-blogger from Argentina recently wrote to ask me to take a look at his site, called Pharmamotion: Pharmacology & Therapeutics Resources.

The purpose of his site is described as: “… to gather educational resources targeted to health professionals that are freely available on the web, for a better understanding of pharmacology. These resources include:  animations and videos that illustrate mechanism of action of drugs (some of them developed by Dr. Guzman);  definitions and concepts from reliable sources about the general principles of pharmacology; press releases and drug reviews from official agencies (FDA, EMEA, NHS, and many others).”

Here’s an example of the content: click here to read a recent post about Direct to Consumer Drug Advertising (Feb 23 2009).

These direct-marketing campaigns, which are aired relentlessly at 630 pm every night in the U.S. while folks are sitting down to dinner… drive me crazy, because who wants to hear a TV ad for mens’ urinary urgency, indigestion or an ad for Viagra when you’re eating with your family – yuck!

I did like his choice of videos.

Today I’ve added his site to add to the blogroll, and also created a new category under Links: Pharmacology and Clinical Therapeutics.

Thanks for the invite, Dr. Guzman!

Economics, Academia, News: Budget Woes, Debt and Choice

An excellent, tongue-in-cheek essay about budget crises, managing cuts, faculty and finding alternative solutions was written by John Lombardi for the Inside Higher Ed blog on “Reality Check“  (Jan 8 2009). His fictional ‘fable’ does a good job at describing the many competing groups and forces operating within a large academic community.

This has been a difficult year for academic institutions.  Buffeted by declining endowment income, scarcer donations from alumni, budget reduction (or rescission) requests from administrators, decreasing state tax revenues and a bleak long-term investment outlook face off against increasing pressure on college enrollments, recruitment (and retention) of talented faculty, expanding class size or teaching loads.

University of Connecticut, like other large state-supported universities, is experiencing these types of market influences.  Following is an excerpt from the weekly digital newspaper, UConn Advance about cost saving initiatives, written by Karen Grava:

“ The University implemented an across-the-board 3.5 percent assessment in the fall – including a rescission of 3 percent and a 0.5 percent reallocation – and achieved substantial savings by placing strict limits on out-of-state travel and implementing a freeze on hiring, except for the most critical positions. “

Excerpt from http://advance.uconn.edu/2009/090217/09021701.htm

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As an academic librarian working with groups of recent college graduates now enrolled in medical or dental school, as an employee of the university and as a parent of a high school senior, I’d say I hold a variety of differing views of the current economic and enrollment challenges that colleges and universities in the U.S. are experiencing.

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One of the students I have known throughout four years of medical school, a former PBL student, recently told me about her meeting with the financial-aid counselor.  She’ll be graduating in May with $190,000 in student loans (which represents a combination of undergraduate and medical school expenses).  These loans turn out to be an “average amount” of U.S. medical or dental student debt, currently.  The counselor worked out a ten-year repayment plan for her to think about.  The monthly cost?  $2,200.  For a lot of folks, that figure is higher than the monthly mortgage payment on their home.  That’s a scary way to begin a career.  On the other hand, being an anesthesiologist pays well.  Eventually.

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For an undergraduate viewpoint, this recent article outlining undergraduate college demographics, written by Lisa Foderaro for the New York Times (Mar 1 2009), gets to the heart of the question.  Melissa Korn on the Wall Street Journal writes about how “dream schools” may be affected for the 2009-2010 academic year (Mar 2 2009).

Finally, my other perspective is as parent of a senior in high school.  Recently I spoke with several local high school guidance counselors about college admissions this year.  Each counselor in this group described 2009 as  “… a very weird year for college applicants“. Following are several of their direct quotes:

“ Seniors who I would have thought would be likely to be admitted to top-tier private schools in other years either aren’t getting in, or if they are accepted, offers of scholarship money or financial aid hasn’t met their expectations [in 2009].”

“ Most students this year have applied to top-tier state universities in addition to private colleges… the average list of ’safety schools’ is longer this year.  Several kids haven’t been accepted at any of the schools they’ve heard from, so far.  There’s also a great deal of wait-listing.”

“ More than a few parents [of our seniors] have lost their jobs or been laid-off recently. Some whose parents can’t help them out financially simply won’t go to college next year or will sit out to work for one or two years.  All in all – it’s been a very difficult year to predict who will go where.”

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Photo credit/source: C. Smith – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

I’m profoundly grateful to report that my kid was admitted to the college of his choice recently. What a relief it was the day that long-awaited letter showed up in the mailbox!

Now if the greater economy would please get going again…

Blogs I Like: Biochemistry Questions Site

Biochemistry Questions Site is a teaching-and-learning blog whose author, Dr. H.D. Urquiza Hernandez, is a professor of biochemistry and holds a PhD in biological sciences.

This is a multi-layered Q & A site which could be useful for medical students who are immersed in micro human biochemistry, or preparing to take the USMLE.  The site is free and open to anyone to use.

His work also exhibits a sense of humor, with a section for “Moviecular Biology” and “Biochemistry at the Movies“.

Plus, where else could one find a crossword puzzle all about Amino Acids!

Photo/Source Credit: http://biochemistryquestions.wordpress.com/biochemical-puzzles/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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.Today, I’ve added the site to my Blogs I Like list.

Academic Medicine, Future Medical Students, News: AAMC Aspiring Docs

Photo Credit/Source: http://AAMC.org – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in January 2009 sponsored the first annual video contest for Aspiring Docs.  Ten awards were made to undergraduate students who “… revealed their dreams of a career in medicine and were rewarded with financial assistance from the AAMC to help cover the costs of preparing for and applying to medical school. “

Winners were announced Feb 24, 2009 on the “Aspiring Docs” website.  If you are interested, their videos are available to view on the AAMC Channel on YouTube.com.

Here is a link to one of them: Chanel Fischetti, a junior at University of Southern California, who learned American Sign Language in anticipation of caring for hearing-impaired patients, describing (and signing) why she wants to become a physician:

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SinQirGtYfU

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One of the ten finalists is an undergraduate from University of Connecticut, Benjamin Gruenbaum.

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Note: Today I found a link to a great teaching-learning site for American Sign Language, with many demonstration videos of words being signed, at ASL University.com.

The Friday Post #29: Librarian Shoes, GigaPan and Bad Bad Food

This is the Friday Post #29 for Apr 3 2009.

Heard of GigaPan? Here’s an excerpt from the About page:

” GigaPan is a collaborative project of Google, Carnegie Mellon University and NASA Ames Intelligent Systems Division’s Robotics Group. It is a robotic platform that attaches to a digital camera and some computer software. The robotic platform allows a user to take a photograph, then it will re-aim the camera with great precision, to take another photograph. After taking many photos, the software stitches all the pictures into a gigapixel image. Public beta-testing of a consumer version of the robotic platform and software has begun. Beta-testing and product platform development is being carried out by GigaPan Systems, who will eventually offer the unit for public sale.“

“ GigaPan is an open website – anyone can upload photographs to it, and anyone can place comments on those photographs. Authors have no editorial control over the comments which are placed on their photographs. “

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Below is a screenshot of a GigaPan photo taken on Jan 20 2009 in Washington DC at the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States.  Photographer David Bergman created this 1,474-megapixel image of President Barack Obama’s inauguration: .

Photo credit: http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

For more information on how the images were created, visit David Bergman’s blog at http://www.davidbergman.net/blog/.

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Please set aside your notions about Librarians wearing sensible shoes and shushing people, because most of us do not Shush and have many stylish pairs of shoes in our closets!!  Where’s the evidence?  Right here on the Flickr group: Librarian Shoes, where this superb photograph was recently posted:

Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/groups/librarianshoes/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

Here another stereotype-busting link: Warrior Librarian!

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Graphic evidence of why many Americans really need to take Lipitor can be viewed on the blog This is Why You’re Fat… and while horrifying vegetarians daily, no doubt!  Be prepared for wretched excess and lots of bacon.  Here’s one recent artistic composition, made with elk meat, called Thunderdome (and submitted by a librarian):

Photo credits/Source: http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/post/90372468/the-thunderdome-three-stacks-of-bacon-sausage – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

That’s the Friday Post for Apr 3 2009, folks!  Enjoy your weekend!

News: Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

March 17, 2009

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to You

Erin Go Bragh!

Photo Credit: http://www.clipartguide.com/_pages/0511-0902-1615-4658.html

News, Academic-Health Science Libraries, Collection Management: Ruminations on Reference – Part 2: Using the (Real) or (Virtual) Library Collections

This is Part 2 of a 3-part post about managing and maintaining a core Reference collection, and the people who use resources available from University of Connecticut Health Center.

As a state-funded public institution, and the only medical library in Connecticut open to the general public, Lyman Maynard Stowe Library is staffed 94-hours per week and provides an open-door policy to anyone, with free access to the university’s collection of subscription databases and health science collection.

Reference librarians and public services staff assist many different types of information seeking folks who come in to use the library: college or graduate students from other area institutions, student nurses, nursing faculty or other allied health professionals, hospital patients or out-patients, family members, high school students, trial attorneys, paralegals, medical writers (and anyone else).  Workstations are available for searching subscription databases, journals, e-textbooks, software, etc. or to access the large online collections and databases from UConn’s Homer Babbidge Library (the main library in Storrs, CT).

There are only a few caveats: users must be on-site in order to access the collections (i.e., no remote access with a current UConn ID), and doing medical research (i.e., not playing computer games for hours using a UCHC workstation).  Printing out full-text articles costs seven cents per page.

Some of the people who visit do so without asking for assistance from staff for finding specific information; some do ask for brief instructions on choosing what to search and how to “best” search it.

Other visitors are very motivated to learn the mechanics of searching Medline (PubMed) effectively from a library professional, which is great… generally in 40 minutes we can demonstrate and teach just about anyone how to search effectively, or introduce them to MedlinePlus.gov.

And there are a few who just won’t touch a computer to find the medical information they’re seeking.  There are varied reasons for this: they may not have computing skills, or have physical impairments such as limited vision or hearing, or  low-mobility.  Some would be better served in another language than English.  And some just don’t want to spend the time to learn how to search online.  A few have just received a bad medical diagnosis and are visibly upset… not a good time to start working on a medical research project.  So the print Reference collection is a resource that they can use (without help, if that is their choice).

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A different divide for our general library users is temporal in nature. Because the library is open seven days per week from 700am to 1100pm during the week, a “day” staff and a “evening/night” staff is required.  How do we best serve those who come here in the daytime hours (when professional staff is here) versus those who use the collections and physical building during evening, night or during weekend hours (when one evening reference librarian is available)? Recently I asked our evening librarian (whose name is John) for input on updating the Reference collection; his response was: “There are plenty of people use the library between 600pm and 10 pm”.   They typically are UConn MPH graduate students, patients or family members  and anyone who has to visit after their workday is over.

He also noted that many of the after-500pm crowd “goes straight to the Reference books… not to the computer“.

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There are standard (anticipated) sets of questions which librarians are accustomed to be asked at Reference.  First to be considered: is this user trying to connect while on-campus… as in there in real-life - or are they connecting digitally?  In other words, did they walk through the (real) front door of the UCHC building on their own two feet, or did they use their mouse to click into the library home page?

Does it matter to them?  Does it matter to the librarians?  Sure! There are more than 4,000 people working in the building every day.  We (i.e. the librarians) aim to serve many different research needs seven days per week.

Here is a list of “composite Reference questions” which public services staff do hear, and answer, on a frequent basis:

• How do I know if you have it? Users who haven’t visited a library in a long time will find the old card catalog long gone… and may not know about – or embrace the utility of – an online catalog. Many graduate students in the MPH or MSN programs are returning adult learners who haven’t been actively using an academic library in decades.  Some of the faculty are still mourning the disappearance of the card catalog. Knowing how to look, as well as where to look is crucial.

• One of the most common questions that reference staff answers daily is: I think the library owns this journal or textbook, but where is it?  It could be online, or on the shelf depending on the date of the publication, the choices of the producer of the information, the budget which was available to the library at the time of publication, or it could be available by request from another library (interlibrary-loan). Digital availability is a decision made by publishers who determine what sources to make available electronically as well as basing their fees on market demand, institutional (versus individual) usage and electronic access charges.  It is a fallacy to think that because a journal or book has gone online, it represents a cost-savings for the library.  Many times, the electronic version is more costly than buying a print edition due to hardware management, storage requirements, staff to manage collections and administer systems… none of these are “free”.

• For Those who do not Compute. It is no longer possible to actually walk into the journals-stacks area to find the volume and issue that is needed, because in many cases, those current issues are now only available digitally.  But there are still plenty of people who do just that.  These users need the librarians’ help to make that leap, and a major concern is that generations of library users are missing essential information because they’ve not learned to effectively employ the tools of the digital library.  These users may not know how to search online.  They may be unaware of the deep investment of digital resources made available to them online.  Some do know about the electronic collections, but don’t possess the technical skills or knowledge base (or confidence) to effectively search online for them.  They are traditional users who still need real books and book-stacks to browse in. This isn’t meant to be “age-discriminatory” because there are many library users who are over 50+ years of age who’ve fully made that leap from in-print to digital format, the so-called “early adopters”.

• The Digital Natives. Having said the above, I’ve yet to meet and work with any 23-year old student who can’t or just won’t use the digital resources of an academic library.  They grew up with a PC and a mouse in their hands.  Their concern is more likely to be, “If it’s not online, I don’t need it“.  Fair enough – we’ll try to supply it online for you.

• Those who do compute but are not searching expertly. Here’s a scene playing out in the library lately:  Users who are technologically-savvy but whose first choice (sometimes their only choice) is to use Google or Google Scholar to search our collections while standing in the real library.  Eek! Google-only searchers end up bypassing our integrated collections of databases and limiting their research retrievals to what they can “google” because they are not searching in the “best” places.  Consequently they miss out on accessing a huge body of clinical information.  They would be better served by searching Medline or Scopus or other subscription resources that they are literally standing right next to in this building.

• Call me. Librarians are generally user-friendly, customer service oriented people whose main goal at work is to connect the user to the information which they require, delivered in an efficient and timely way.  When this model doesn’t work, users can and should initiate a conversation to ask for assistance… this could be via telephone, email, in-person at the Reference desk.  How can we (librarians) help library users – either in the building or off-campus – when they don’t find what they need but then also do not ask for assistance on how to search or which sources are best to answer their research questions?

• Digital Migration. A journal or textbook may go out of print at any time in favor of digital access only.  As an example, this library pays for access to roughly 1,100 electronic textbooks currently. It is an individual decision by the collection management librarians as to whether to continue to purchase a paper textbook if the digital version is available.  Some core medical textbooks – such as Nelson’s Pediatrics, Hurst’s The Heart and especially, Harrison’s Principals of Internal Medicine – are heavily used in both formats.  It is a judgement call to be made by the librarians, weighing cost versus availability versus expected usage.  Hint: Networked version of standard medical textbooks generally get funding.

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Here are a few other things librarians ruminate over.

• Library users researching topics outside the scope of health sciences and medicine should search the resources assembled by our main library.  Access is only a few mouse-clicks away, including 240+ academic subject databases and a vast journal collection available online.  How many times have I said to someone, “Just go to Storrs”.  The response sometimes is “I don’t want to drive there!”.  (Um.  There’s no need to drive there in a car to access these resources if you are affiliated or are on-site.)

• A declining gate count doesn’t mean people are using the library less. We as librarians need to provide better statistical reporting and become more effective at explaining and promoting library services to senior managers in a time of budget stressors.  Do university or hospital administrators understand that the number of times that people actually walk in the front door into the real library (what librarians call the ‘gate count’) declines as we become more successful at providing virtual access to periodicals, textbooks, databases and teaching materials?

• Information literacy is a concern because some of our users coming in the door may not speak or read in the English language well enough to understand what medical information is available here. But lbrarians have found online sources for patient-education materials in Spanish, Polish or other languages… but if those users didn’t ask Reference staff for assistance, it isn’t likely they could find those sources on their own.

• We never see you anymore. How do library staff measure users’ satisfaction (or lack of satisfaction) with our collections and services, if we aren’t in the same building to interact face-to-face?  How do our remote users ask for help with searching or finding, if they are sitting at their home or office 20 miles from the reference librarians?  Or if they working at 1:oo am, when there’s no staff in the library but they are searching?  What are quantifiable, credible ways to measure the results of remote library users that we don’t get to interact with face-to-face?  This is a long-term issue for library managers.  There are statistics about hits on subscription journal titles or databases, quantified by date and time, but that data is only a part of the answer.

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If you’ve read this far… thank you for hanging in there to read what has unexpectedly become something of an essay! The last and final part of the Musings on Reference will appear next week, with a list of open-access documents or reports which I found while looking up “other stuff” for the 2009 Reference collection update.

News, Academic-Health Science Libraries, Collection Management: Ruminations about Reference (Part 1)

Here’s an example of what I’ve been looking at all  week . month:

Photo credit/Source: http://www.oclc.org/us/en/default.htm – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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March is the month to turn towards the annual task of updating the Reference collection in the library (which is my responsibility).  The graduate students have their Spring Break this week, so it’s a good time to tackle this project.

When you were a little kid, did you hang around in the library, looking at books with no particular plan for researching anything specific? Maybe only born researchers or born librarians do that!  

Now as a grown up librarian, it is still amazing to me the diversity of information that one can stumble over while on the way to looking something else entirely unrelated.  Browsing and serendipity can play a part in pursuing research whether you’re surfing the net or standing in the book stacks, holding an actual book.

Librarians do hear this phrase occasionally: “If it’s not online, I don’t want it.“  A recent observation (in my problem-based learning class) is that this generation of Milleniums much prefer their research information online… and who are reluctant to walk into the “bricks and mortar” library to find a textbook in print.

As collection managers and archivists, one of our major responsibilities is to deliver current library materials and services in the manner in which our patrons best like to “consume” them.  The shift from print to digital access does impact how librarians select (and store) their core collections.

A complex mix of collection management decisions weigh format and availability versus price and expected (potential or future) usage which also roughly indexes the librarians’ expectation about the longevity or lasting value of the material.

Thrown into these choices: Collection budgets (which are shrinking), and what our students, clinicians, pharmacists and the general library users prefer to use (print or online). Luckily, in this library there are librarians with decades of experience to muse with these decisions… and thanks for the advice, AD!

In other words, does it make better sense to buy one (physical, paper) textbook produced in 2009 for $450 (for example) when you could, as as alternative, purchase an electronic, perpetual version of the work for $1,000 which can be read simultaneously by up to five online readers and whose clinical content is updated monthly?  Collection management, a bit like the practice of medicine, is both an art and a science.

The goal is to select the most cost-effective means to provide the essential resources needed by your particular community.  As the migration of library collections continues away from print to digital access (i.e., always on, never checked out, 24 x 7 x 365 days per week…  provided that the network is up and running), the next post in this series will explore concerns and decisions that academic-medical librarians in 2009 need to balance in order to offer the most complete collections available.

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I would like to welcome our newest reference librarian - JK -to the health science library this week.

We are so glad you joined us!

News: Today is Match Day 2009!

Today – Thursday, Mar 19 2009 – is Match Day 2009!  Good luck and God speed to every medical student in the Class of 2009!

At 1:00pm (ET), fourth-year medical students will find out – simultaneously – where in the U.S. they will be spending the next year of their life as residents. This is a nervous phase of medical education, as these near-doctors wait to learn if they must make plans to move across the country (or across the street).  Match Day is a day to look forward to for faculty and staff at UConn Health Center, as we stand by and witness our graduating seniors as they stand at the crux of a new life. This is their day of celebration, exhilaration, profound relief… and possibly for those few who didn’t get their first choices, some tears.

See the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) site for more information.

Reference for Academic-Health Science Libraries, Collection Management, Open Access: Peripheral Finds

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Having been hunkered down in my cubicle for the past month updating the library’s Reference Collection, I am now ready to step back into the light and offer up Part #3 of Reference Ruminations (if you missed the first two postings, here’s part 1 and part 2).

Digging around looking for new or updated titles is part of the fun of collection management.  Less fun is staying within one’s $$ budget while keeping a current health science reference collection to a constant size. Migration from print to online format continues at a fast pace in 2009.

“Trolling” or “trawling” (if these are the correct terms) describes the specialized peripheral vision belonging to librarians (or scientists) that requires one to never pass up examining a new book, journal article or website (or whatever else looks interesting – the shoe section at Marshalls also qualifies) even though we weren’t specifically looking for that type of information.

An eclectic list follows… they represent sites that I wasn’t exactly looking for – but turned out to offer timely, focused reporting on a variety of health-related data, policy or statistical information that I couldn’t ignore. The publishers or data-gatherers linked below include nonprofit organizations, academies, public or social policy institutions, government agencies, charitable foundations and others.  Most (but not all) of this content is freely distributed.

It is my hope that you will find information of value to your research from the links below.

• The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation website is a real treasure-trove of information for the social scientist or epidemiologist.  Find reports and data on U.S. public policy, demographics, health policy, health planning, minority or women’s health, health care costs, insurance coverage, Medicare/Medicaid.  As one example, in October 2008, KFF and the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid & the Uninsured published a 36-page report entitled “The Uninsured: A Primer“.  Also useful is their reference section called Fast Facts and a page dedicated to individualized data about each U.S. state.

• The name RAND.org “ originated as a contraction of Research and Development… today RAND conducts research on more than 1,000 topics in a typical year “.  Here’s a link to RAND publications about Health or Health Care.  An example: A 2008 publication by staff from the RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research, “Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery” is available to download for free (note: it is a 499 page PDF document) or to purchase in print.

• The National Academies Press (NAP) ” was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council… NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health “.

• Research efforts conducted or sponsored by NAP’s Institute of Medicine (IOM) is organized into “seventeen health topic areas: mental health, child health, food and nutrition, aging, women’s health, education, public policy, health care and quality, diseases, global health, workplace, military and veterans, health sciences, environment, treatment, public health and prevention, minority health.”  Link to IOM topic pages here.  Many of their publications are available online at no cost.

• A large collection of publications by staff at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) are online; some are free, though most are not. One example: “Diversity in Medical Education: Facts & Figures 2008“, a 147 page report, is downloadable for free from the AAMC site.  The AAMC Newsroom is a good place to check for current announcements, new or forthcoming publications about academic medicine or physician workforce issues, such as this recent announcement about results of the 2009 residency match.

• The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provides access to a large library of publications via their Topic List. One example: a RWJF policy synthesis paper entitled “High and Rising Health Care Costs” (October 2008, 47-page PDF) can be read or downloaded at no cost.

• A major source for U.S. health-related and demographic data can be found on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) site.  Three examples:  Health Care Research Findings, Data & Surveys Index or Specific Populations Index.

• Also on the AHRQ site: Extrapolated data on MEPS (or Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.

• The LeapFrog Group has provided data on hospital safety ratings by state on their website, openly available at this link. MD-Consult had this to say about the data, published Apr 15 2008:  “Hospitals are barely meeting quality and efficiency standards, according to a survey issued on April 15 by the Leapfrog Group, an organization made up of some of America’s largest employers.”

• Epidemiologists and MPH students use the longitudinal reports, surveys and other data compiled by the staff at National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).  Researchers can register with NCHS to download actual datasets for research purposes at no charge; see CDC Wonder for more information about these files.

• “Why Not the Best?  A National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance” (2008) was a major report published by The Commonwealth Fund.  There is also extensive state health data available on the site, all of which is available at no charge.
  

• Wish I had looked on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) site when trying to answer a recent reference question about lowering incidence of hospital-acquired infections with Clostridium difficile infections (January 2009), found grouped within their Topics Page.  There are currently 18 topical White Papers posted on open access although  registration and log-in is required to view the PDF files.

• A major charitable organization for promoting health and social justice worldwide, The MacArthur Foundation website could take hours to examine. One place to begin for those interested in demography or epidemiology is their domestic Research Networks page.

• Based in Washington, the Center for Studying Health System Change published in 2008 a tracking report entitled “Falling Behind: Americans’ Access to Medical Care Deteriorates, 2003-2007“.  I also liked their Links page to many other U.S. organizations.

• The Childrens’ Defense Fund has an extensive digital library of data, statistics and policy synthesis reports on American children, their health, families and communities.  In December 2008, CDF published a 80-page report on “The State of America’s Children“, available online (link to the 80-page PDF).

• A particularly useful site for recent data and policy reports on American families at risk is the Knowledge Center from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is “helping vulnerable kids and families succeed”.  As an example, the Kids Count page allows one to search for demographic or health information using standardized key indicators (such as access to housing, poverty, birth outcomes, access to early childhood education, uninsured families and other community and socioeconomic factors) across states.

• The Connecticut State Library has created an archival Digital Collections page.  As one example, this 2007 report entitled “Inmates and Mental Health“… useful to know because UCHC clinicians provide a full range of medical and dental care for inmates held in correctional facilities throughout Connecticut.

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Since I was taking photos anyway, below are a few more views of the library.  The main floor of the library had a major renovation, completed in 2005.  In 2008, some areas of the 2nd floor were renovated.

These are the so-called Barney Chairs (as in, plush, overstuffed and really purple), positioned next to the Reference stacks for those who like to sit comfortably by the windows to read:

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The 2nd floor of the library is a popular quiet study space.

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A library plant, Crown of Thorns (euphorbia milii), flowered this week.

All Photos: Courtesy of UCHC – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

News, Teaching and Learning in Medicine and Dentistry: An Upgrade for MedEdPortal

.MedEdPORTAL is an open-access archive of 1,300 educational or clinical training materials voluntarily submitted by medical or dental faculty from around the world, sponsored and produced by the Association of American Medical Colleges and American Dental Education Association.  Here is the AAMC description of the site:

” MedEdPORTAL is a free online publication service…  designed to promote educational collaboration by facilitating the open exchange of teaching resources such as clinical tutorials, virtual patients, simulation cases, tutorials, lab guides, videos, podcasts, assessment tools, etc.  While MedEdPORTAL’s primary audiences include health educators and learners around the globe, it is open and available for free to the general public. Users can access quality, peer-reviewed teaching material and assessment tools in both the basic and clinical sciences in medicine and in oral health “.

Source: http://services.aamc.org/30/mededportal/servlet/segment/mededportal/information/

An upgrade to the content and searchability of the page was announced on Apr 7 2009 by AAMC, and the name is now MedEdPORTAL 2.0.

This is an important archive of peer-reviewed teaching and training tools for students, residents (and librarians).  The architecture of the site has been made more functional, with the addition of subject/content links like this one:

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.Another way to search the site is to Browse by Discipline or Hot Topics in Medicine or Dentistry.

An example of featured content, added Mar 4 2009 by a faculty in Emergency Medicine from University of Minnesota, is entitled “Stab to Neck” (two screenshots from this video/tutorial):

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Source Credit:  All images courtesy of http://www.aacm.org/medportal – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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I like this site – it is created by physicians – for physicians (and students) in all disciplines.   The brainpower and clinical experience of many are shared on MedEdPORTAL.

AAMC and ADEA have created a fine, free example of the power of cooperative resource-sharing distributed on an open-access platform.  It should be on your list of teaching-and-training bookmarks.

The (Good) Friday Post #30, News, Holidays: Welcome Spring!

Welcome, Sunshine and Daffodils !

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Zazzle.com – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

News, Scholarly Communications, Scientific Literature: The DBIO 100

Librarians like to network (and socialize) and one of their major professional associations to consider joining is Special Libraries Association.  SLA is a non-profit organization representing the interests of librarians and knowledge managers working for commercial corporations, law firms, governmental agencies, non-profit organizations, biomedical, technical or academic institutions, museums, law firms, etc.

SLA sponsors a section called Division of BioMedical & Life Sciences (or DBIO), which is described on their blog as a “community for biomedical and life science librarians and information professionals“.

A poll of almost 700 DBIO members was conducted electronically in late 2008 and early 2009, asking them to identify the “100 most influential journals of Biology & Medicine over the last one hundred years“.  Every section member was eligible to vote.

The stated goal was for the final vote “ to yield a balanced assortment of 33 or 34 journals in three areas:  Clinical Medicine & Allied Health, Molecular & Cell Biology and Natural History “.

The 12-page summary report was written by Tony Stankus, Life Sciences Librarian and Science Liaison at University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, who recruited the expert teams, arbitrated disputes about disciplinary boundaries, and served as final editor.

This venerable list, “The DBIO 1oo“, was made public in January 2009, and is available – free, online – at this link (note: PDF).  The list of journals is also shown on the March 2009 SLA press release about the project.

The SLA DBIO section will hold an award ceremonies for publishers and editors of this special group of journals, scheduled to be held during the 2009 SLA National Conference, June 14-17, Washington, D.C.

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The official DBIO blog is an interesting information source, too.

The Friday Post #31: A Collection of Errors, Pimping, Anatomical Knitting and One Classic Music Video

Here’s the Friday Post #31 for Apr 24 2009.

First:  A funny collection of One Hundred 404 Error Screens from the blog of Francesco Mugnai. I especially liked the guy with the long ponytail in the red cowboy bikini and the thigh-high leather boots (you know, the one holding the .357 magnum).  In fact I think it may be Sean Connery.

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Next, more Anatomical Knitting found on BoingBoing, a Dissected Froggy:

Photo Credit: Courtesy of BoingBoing.com – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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Do Not Sulk or Cry

” Students who answer incorrectly should not become overly discouraged. Attendings rarely remember students who give wrong answers (especially to difficult questions); they often remember those who lose their composure. “

Excerpt from  “The Art of Pimping” by Alan Detsky, MD – published in JAMA, Vol. 301 – issue 13, p. 1379-1381 (April 1 2009)

DB’s MedRants - and many other physician-bloggers – have already blogged about this article.  Life in the Fast Lane wrote a multi-part post about pimping.  Funny and cruel.

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Exams are finally wrapped up for awhile (after ten difficult days for the  students), so get jiggy with Will Smith for a minute because 3.7 million views on YouTube can’t be wrong, and besides, those Egyptians are very handsome :

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Video credit: http://www.youtube.com – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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And that’s the Friday Post for Apr 24 2009, folks.  Enjoy our beautiful planet this weekend.

News, Media, Web 2.0 Culture: On Information Overload

National Library Week?  (Oh… totally missed it because I spent all last week trying to get Twitter figured out and am making some progress with that).

Today (Apr 22 2009), Google informed me, is Earth Day. In an approximate way, a recent campaign by the non-profit group Adbusters.org is similar.

On their “About” page, Adbusters.org, a non-profit organization based in Vancouver, states:  “ We are a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.”

The overarching message from Adbusters.org suggests some or all of the following:  turning off your TV, unplugging your electronic devices, adopting a skeptical outlook about the culture of continual consumption.   Their content fosters an attitude of anti-big business, anti-advertising, anti-obesity, staying off the grid, and in general advocates for using less stuff – both for the health of individual people, and for the greater good of the planet.

An example: the group declared November 28, 2008 as “Buy Nothing Day” and urged readers to cut up their credit cards, get out of debt, shop and spend less.  (Many thousands of Americans did not do this.)

This week, Adbusters.org has declared Digital Detox Week (Apr 21-26, 2009) which urges readers to “go off-line for seven brain-restoring days” by unplugging all their digital devices.  (Many thousands of Americans will not be doing this.)

Following is a screenshot of their campaign-logo, urging folks to get off the grid:

Photo credit: http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/digitaldetox – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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Here’s a list of recent tweets about the idea.

After looking around on their website (and chuckling over their SpoofAds), I came across the link to ABTV (AdbustersTV) and found this 2008 video called Information Deformation, which raises some enduring talking points about manipulation (or management) of our global attention-spans in this Digital Age:

Video Source: http://www.adbusters.org/abtv/adbusters – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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When my son was about seven years old, he asked me a number of important questions:

• “Mom, were there cars when you were growing up?“
• “Did you have television then?  What programs did you watch?” *
• “Well…. what did you do before there was the Internet?”
• Brief thoughtful silence.
• Then: <sigh>  “It sounds pretty boring when you were growing up, Mom.” (this final statement… with a pitying glance).

These are questions that only a digital native would ask, of course.

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Several medical bloggers posted items this week about Information Overload.  Here are two I enjoyed reading:

• Clinical Cases and Image Blog on Medical Blogging and Twitter
• Alisha764’sBlog on “Too Fast and Furious: Web 2.0 Overload“

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So, will you be unplugging your devices this week?

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* Scooby-Do, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Petticoat Junction, Hollywood Squares, and anything by The Three Stooges.

News, Public Health, Global Health: A Potential Pandemic of Influenza

Public health concerns dominate the news headlines this week, as evidence continues to unfold of a global outbreak of a novel strain of swine influenza A/H1N1.

Thanks to an active international group of Medical Bloggers and Librarians connected through social networking sites such as FriendFeed or Twitter, as I arrive at work on Monday morning, this connectedness becomes a great advantage for those of us in the United States, as our European colleagues have already scanned and posted many news or website links on items of vital concern, as emerging news continues to pour in from many places around the world.

Following are a brief set of links to global health information, disease-tracking and interactive-maps for the spread of Swine Influenza A/H1N1 (reported as of Monday, Apr 27 2009):

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Image credit:  http://www.tweetdeck.com – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

International

• World Health Organization (WHO)
• WHO – Swine Influenza Page
• WHO – Epidemic and Pandemic Alert Page
  
• WHO - Global Disease Outbreak News page

• Pro-Med, sponsored by Federation of American Scientists (FAS), is “a program for monitoring emerging infectious diseases“.

• The International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID) produces ProMed-Mail, described as “the global electronic reporting system for outbreaks of  emerging infectious diseases & toxins, open to all sources“. Subscription to ProMed-Mail is available to anyone, free of charge; updates can be set up for daily or weekly email alerts.

• European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

• UCHC Library subscribes to GIDEON (Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Online Network), which is a specialized database for epidemiologists used for “… diagnosis and reference in the fields of tropical and infectious diseases, epidemiology, microbiology and antimicrobial chemotherapy.  GIDEON currently tracks 337 diseases, 224 countries, 1,147 microbial taxa and 306 antibacterial (-fungal, -parasitic, -viral) agents and vaccines, including over 10,000 notes outlining the status of specific infections within each country and over 20,000 images, graphs, interactive maps and references“.  GIDEON is updated daily.

United States

• U.S. Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)
• Swine Influenza Information – CDC
  
• Also see CDC – Swine Flu Guidance for Clinicians & Public Health Officials

• Pandemic Flu Page and Info About Pandemic Staging
  

• Ben Parr on Mashable (Apr 25 2009) has written a concise summary of websites for current and credible information on Swine Flu at http://mashable.com/2009/04/25/track-swine-flu/

Tracking the Outbreaks

• Google provides a free service called News Alert, which you can create yourself using any key-words to search on.

• Swine Flu Time Map – in this example, shown for the United States.

• “2009 Swine Flu H1N1 Outbreak and Migration Map” (on Apr 27 2009) from Live Search: Maps.

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I’d like to acknowledge the cooperative work of many European scientists and medical librarians – and in particular, bloggers Laikas, Berci and DigiCMB – who are always 6-8 hours ahead of me, both literally speaking in the real world and in many Web 2.0 innovations, who have posted scientific links and news about swine flu and steered  me to several links for this post today.   Thank you to these talented, and generous, colleagues.

News, Scholarly Communications, Journals: Keep up to date with ticTOCS

Scientists, clinicians and students who need to read continually in their specialty fields to stay current frequently express frustration over the amount of time and efforts needed to keep up each month.

Our collection management librarian at UCHC recently told me about this great site:  ticTOCs where one can… “ find 12,415 scholarly journal Table of Contents (TOCs) from 436 publishers “.

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TicTocs

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ticTOCs is a journal-alerting, table of contents service based in the UK.  This service is free; registration with the site is required to set up individual alerting preferences.

Following is an excerpt from the ticTOCS “About” page:

” The ticTOCs Journal Tables of Contents service makes it easy for academics, researchers, students and anyone else to keep up-to-date with newly published scholarly material by enabling them to find, display, store, combine and reuse thousands of journal tables of contents from multiple publishers. With ticTOCs, it only takes a or two to keep up to date.”

” The ticTOCs Consortium consists of: the University of Liverpool Library (lead), Heriot-Watt University, CrossRef, ProQuest, Emerald, RefWorks, MIMAS, Cranfield University, Institute of Physics, SAGE Publishers, Inderscience Publishers, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Open J-Gate, and Intute.”

Next, a screenshot of the link where one can register for the service, and then set preferences for receiving table of contents from individual journals:

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Today, I did a search for “hepatology” on ticTOCs; here is a photo of the results:

Text and image credits: ticTocs – http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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Wow! Can it get any easier to sign up to begin receiving table of contents-alerts from individual scientific publications?

Please give ticTOCs a try.  (And thanks to AD!)

News, Public Health, Emerging Technologies: Delivering the News… Online We Are

It’s been a big news week.  Global health developments have occurred with such rapidity that reporting the news of this week  gives additional meaning to the use of the term “viral” as in… tracking the global spread of a novel virus:  A/H1N1 – swine influenza.

After writing this post, I then noticed that only one of items on the list below refers to materials which are in print (that of the journal Public Health Reports).  It is online that we are.

• DynaMed, an evidence based medicine resource which UCHC Library subscribes to, announced this week that an online section for current clinical information on Swine Influenza A/H1N1 will be available to anyone in the world at no cost – at this link.  The database, produced by Ebsco, is updated daily.

• Scientist-Librarian Laikas has posted about the uses (and mis-uses) of Twitter which makes for a really good read: http://laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/twitter-goes-viral-swine-flu-outbreak-twitter-a-dangerous-hype/

• And on Twitter (of course), is where I found this link to the “25 Best Twitter Feeds to Follow the Swine Flu” from the blog Masters of Healthcare (Apr 30 2009).

• A PubMed citation from the journal Public Health Reports refers to an article published in 2008 entitled “The Animal-Human Interface and Infectious Disease in Industrial Food Animal Production: Rethinking Biosecurity and Biocontainment“, which is all the more disturbing after reading a recent blog-post by Mike Davis (Apr 27 2009) titled “Capitalism and the Flu“.  A link found on Google News to a blog called Narco News describes large-scale industrial pig farming in the Veracruz region of Mexico, where epidemiologists have traced the initial human infections with the current A/H1N1 strain (posted Apr 29 2009).  These two items are not exactly pure-science articles, but are nonetheless disturbing.

• Finally, the cartoonist-blogger XKCD drew a great comic this week, arguing against getting one’s news of the day from Twitter and re-tweets.  Many other bloggers worldwide have featured this cartoon this week, but in case you missed it…

Photo/Source credit:http://xkcd.com/574/

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IMHO: The option of becoming a vegetarian is growing more and more attractive.

The Friday Post #32: Let’s Dance!

Here’s the Friday Post #32 for May 8 2009.

Sunday, May 3rd marked the birthday of an American original: musician, songwriter and dancer James Brown (1933-2006).

WoW… that man could dance.  Here is the proof:

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Snowball is a sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita eleonora) who lives in Indiana with his bird rescuer Irena Schulz.  The bird’s unique dancing and bopping-ability was featured on the ScienceNews blog (April 30 2009) which is where I first heard about him.  A quick search on PubMed turned up the research report written by scientists Aniruddh Patel, John Iversen, Micah Bregman and Irena Schulz entitled “Experimental Evidence for Synchronization to a Musical Beat in a Nonhuman Animal” which published last week in the journal Current Biology 19 (May 14 2009).

Embedded in the article is a video of Snowball dancing to three segments of music with varying beats per minute (BPM): 106, 125 and 130 BPM, which you can watch at this link (media player popup).

YouTube.com offers two somewhat less officially scientific videos of Snowball grooving, the first to the music of Queen. Notice that he has to stop in the middle of the song and rest up a bit.  But he really is sort of a cheerful Bird-Athlete, don’t you think?

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See another video of Snowball dancing to the Backstreet Boys here

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Finally, anyone who reads this blog knows that I love cephalopods.  Do cephalopods dance?  Dunno, but here’s a video of one clever Octopus filmed as she’s trying to get at a tasty treat which her human left for her in a sealed jar:

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And that’s the Friday Post for May 8 2009!  Have a great weekend, folks.

Public Health, Epidemiology, Medical History: Swine Flu? Over-Hype for Some, A Dress Rehearsal for Others

” The alarm around this particular strain [A-H1N1] has a couple of roots. First is, it’s new… it’s novel. And new is always cause for some amount of concern. Second, it does appear to have just recently jumped from one species, pigs, to another, humans. And very commonly, in the whole world of viruses – not just influenzas – when they first make the jump from one species to another is when they’re really hot viruses, dangerous viruses. That certainly was the case with SARS, which had just made the jump from bats to civets, civets to humans.  So we always worry when we see a recent jump. ”

A quote from Laurie Garrett, during an interview with the Online News Hour (transcript link here) on May 1 2009.

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Ms. Garrett, author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (1994), and The Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (2000), is currently a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

How A/H1N1 influenza – identified in Mexico in March 2009 – continues to develop in human populations is still uncertain, as the virus spreads to every continent.  The good news is that clinicians seem to think it is not as virulent as first feared; the bad news is that over time, the possibility still exists that we are witnessing a phenomena that every epidemiologist dreads in his or her lifetime: the emergence of an uncontainable virus in a human population who have little or no immunity against it.

While many people thought the media hype over this emerging virus was of hysterical proportions, and discounted the severity of the strain, a different way to view these events is as a sort of dress rehearsal which demonstrated that world-wide networks of disease surveillance, data-collection and cooperative intelligence sharing are functioning reasonably well.  (But I’m not a virologist so maybe I know no more than the next guy on the street.)

If nothing else, it shows that swarm-intelligence and citizen-journalism is alive and well!

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You could say that some of my reactions to public health crises have been shaped in part by having lived in city of San Francisco in the early 1980’s, when a different public health crisis unfolded with the identification of a novel viral infection which came to be known as human immunodeficiency virus.  If you haven’t already read And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts, who was a reporter at the time for the San Francisco Chronicle, it is truly worth the time. *

Let’s hear it for more dress rehearsals, and fewer real-life epidemics.

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Following are a few books or online resources for background information on epidemiological investigations, medical detective work and emerging infectious diseases, for your consideration:

• “The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready?” A Workshop Summary, 2005 (free online full-text from National Academies Press site – link to PDF here).

• Book: The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry (Viking, 2004).

• Website: All the Virology on the Web

• VirologyWiki and ProMedNetwork and TWIV (This Week in Virology)

• Book: When Germs Travel: Six major epidemics that have invaded America since 1900 and the fears they have unleashed by Howard Markel (Pantheon Books, 2004).

• Book: Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection and Response by Mark Smolinski, Margaret Hamburg, Joshua Lederberg (National Academies Press, 2003).

• Book: The Molecular Epidemiology of Human Viruses, by Thomas Leitner (Kluwer, 2002).

• Book: The Invisible Enemy: A Nature History of Viruses, by Dorothy Crawford (Oxford University Press, 2000).

• Online Book: Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching by Dr. Michael Greger (Human Society Press, 2006).  Free fulltext book at this link.

• United States Geological Service (USGS): Disease Maps

• Book:  Man and Microbes: Diseases & Plagues in History and Modern Times, by Arlo  Karlen (Putnam Books, 1994).

• Robert Preston is the author of two popular works, The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story (Random House, 2o02) and The Hot Zone: A terrifying true story (Random House, 1995).

• Book:  Emerging Viruses in Human Populations by Edward Tabor (Volume 17 of Perspectives in Medical Virology, Elsevier, 2007).

• Book: Seasonal Patterns of Stress, Immune Function, and Disease by Randy Nelson (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

• Book:  Human Virology: A Text for Students of Medicine, Dentistry and Microbiology by Leslie Collier (Oxford University Press, 2006).

• Also see the Bookshelf on PubMed and the Online Books Page – Virology Search.

• A professor of virology from Columbia University blogs at the Virology Blog.

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* Randy Shilts, who was a great journalist and a brave activist for gay rights, died of AIDS in 1994 at age 42.