Hashtags in Pwaise of the Twapper Keeper

It all started last month when I realized QuoteURL was (sadly) no longer functional, I had a small conference worth of tweets I didn't want to lose after the two week Twitter search grace period, and began scrambling frantically for free web-based Twitter archiving alternatives.

Enter TwapperKeeper.com

Seriously, how can you resist ripped Velcro school nostalgia combined with Twitter?

Initially I thought Twapper Keeper wouldn't work retroactively to capture the search results but it did much to my relief. Trust an 80s-inspired product to go retro appropriately! All 469 small conference tweets (#pncmla09) are there in the 500 limit view and I also set up Twapper Keeper for an enormous conference with low Twitter participation from last week (#eval09)

Then I went and subverted the presenters of today's webcast from the Medical Library Association (MLA, Cut the Cord: Connecting to our Mobile Users) by about six minutes when I set up a Twapper Keeper for a 2 hour presentation that has over 500 tweets thus far (#mlamobile). That was one great presentation by the way, check out the archive and the DVD when it's available later if you missed it.

In retrospect a unique hashtag may be better because the original plan of #mlawebcast & reusing it might result in a massive archive of confusion: which #mlawebcast when? We are librarians after all, I'm sure we'll start referencing points from previous MLA webcast hashtags along with future tweets or whatever incarnation social media takes by the Spring 2010 webcast.

WTHashtag.com looks pretty cool as well (#mlamobile) with the ability to add a comprehensive definition of the hashtag, generate statistics and a transcript. I'm concerned about the number discrepancy (546 to Twapper Keeper's 566 currently) and I'm not sure how long the results hang around for reference.

I still miss QuoteURL for its ability to create Twitter conversation threads though and am glad the original reason why still works (one, two, three, and four) although I'll back that up right now.

One-stop MBL/NLM Spring 2009 BioMedical Informatics bloggage

Want to learn more about the MBL/NLM BioMedical Informatics course?

Without further ado:

Day One

• What is informatics?
• Bioinformatics
• Database design
• Disaster informatics

Day Two

• Controlled terminology
• Imaging informatics
• Telemedicine

Day Three

• Clinical information systems (CIS)
• NCBI, PubMed & more

Day Four

• Public health informatics
• Consumer health informatics
• Decision analytic tools for evidence-based practice
• Personal health records (PHR)

Day Five & Six

• Education informatics
• Care Provider Order Entry (CPOE)
• Evaluation
• Internet: What's coming
• Current issues

If anyone asks me how Woods Hole went, for the time being I spout forth one or more of the following

• Amazing. Just amazing.
• 125 people applied for 1 of the 30 spots there. Why did they pick me?
• Why isn't MLA collectively tapping Woods Hole alumni for the Vital Pathways project? Usually followed by an incoherent spiel about membership/organization ROI, future trends with electronic medical records, politics, etc.
• Check out this pen, it's also a 1G flash drive!

My advice: Apply next year if this grabs hold of you. I'll be working on an online class to teach others but I guarantee the experience won't come remotely close. The all-expenses paid fellowship is not just for Americans as we had a Norwegian there too (skol!) Our medical library profession needs all the help it can get for navigating and advocating in informatics. If you weren't accepted for the program this year, try again. Keep it real by speaking your truth, your passion, and your intent to go forth and help change things for the better. I did within 6 hours after class was over by connecting two people working at federal agencies who needed to be talking with each other about the projects they're working on!

You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result. ~Mahatma Ghandi

PubMed update now online.. now share your thoughts!

Were you at MLA '09 and missed some of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) presentations, wanted to watch one again, or were never there in the first place to see them? Check out the Medical Library Association 2009 Annual Meeting Theater Presentations!

In particular don't miss the PubMed Update, 17 minutes long with accurate closed captioning so no sound is required to receive all the information. You did get the news that Single Citation Matcher is not going away, correct? If not, see for yourself at 1:27! An introduction and explanation of the NCBI Discovery Initiative and the PubMed 'ads' are from 12:46-14:13. The PubMed redesign information begins at 15:30 with a great picture of a mockup at 16:00.

I am honestly sorry I can't do a full play-by-play guide like last year, but the life part of my work-life balance is extremely out of order at the moment.

What do you think about how things are currently with PubMed? What at MLA '09 caught your attention for what's in store? What third-party PubMed apps do you love? The delay is over; blog about it by June 5th and share with everyone! Please click to review the rules & entry form.

As an aside: Am I that much of a dork for wondering why they call this a theater presentation when there's no big screen, no comfy chairs or sticky floors, and no popcorn? The answer is probably yes.

Mahalo MLA '09 Connectivity!

While I was truly happy to miss Hawaii in order to celebrate two family birthdays, a Cub Scout graduation ceremony that involved torrential rain and rockets, and a breakfast with my two favorite aunts from out of state, I was concerned about not being aware of the news coming from the conference and being 'out of the loop.'

I shouldn't have.

Due to the great efforts of many talented organizers, I not only felt I was hearing the latest thanks to Twitter and the Official Blog, but I was able to participate in them live a few times. Special thanks go to whoever set up the TweetChat channel at the Tech Trends panel (a bear walking by our house rudely interrupted my time there) and Rachel Walden during the Ethics Task Force open forum for voicing my Twitter input there.

What I am most excited about are the conference posters online, presented in a forum for all to browse. Having the MLA 09 poster guide handy is probably best as the search function highlights matched posters for terms but won't draw them together into a collection. Go check it out! The rather large embed is below this post in case it doesn't come across the RSS feed.

Friday Foolery #34: The Hukilau Song

In 1990 I met one of my best friends for life at camp. She tortured me by singing The Hukilau Song repeatedly then got several of my friends to do the same. I still love her anyway.

As a result of surfing YouTube for examples of this song to share, our 6 year old son has now learned it & the torture is continuing anew 19 years later.

Since I'm not there to do it myself, I challenge the Medical Library Association '09 crowd to get a ukulele and play it. Don't know the tune, the words, or how to play a ukulele? No problem! Here is everything you need from a great teacher right here in Seattle:



Just imagine the fun & excitement you now have in store for your committee and section business meetings that begin at 6:30 AM!



Bonus points if you stop by to serenade Elsevier* with a bunch of cod!

Elsevier*: An ethically responsible call to action

(a visit from the Library Society of the World's Cod of Ethics to the seafood pasta salad bar)

I have been waiting for all of my brilliant library colleagues to cover the Elsevier/Merck fake journal fiasco before offering my own opinion here, but the fact of the matter is that while H1N1 may not yet be an official stage 6 pandemic... this issue is.

It very well should and continue to be because this is a serious breach of ethics that is deeply disturbing to the information field.

Previously I was unaware of the Progressive Librarians Guild, which is a bit too out there even for me, but today their blog entry caught my attention because they put into words exactly what I've been thinking:

ALA and other library organizations, such as the Medical Library Association, must insist that Elsevier and its divisions reveal all covert corporate involvements in sponsored pseudo-scholarship, especially the role of MECCs (medical education and communication companies), which are paid to “ghostwrite” disingenuous articles. Elsevier must commit itself to ending such activity and must apply consistent standards of research integrity and transparency commensurate to the key role many of its fields of publication play in spheres affecting the public interest.

Is the Medical Library Association listening? Check out our new president's message today on Twitter:



If you want to print your own Cod of Ethics to take to MLA '09, please do as it isn't copyrighted. I do hope people will attend the Ethics Task Force meeting and discuss Elsevier in particular. We had quite a discussion on Medical Librarians FriendFeed since I didn't know about the task force existence before all this hit.

It is hard enough for us already to teach about the use of credible health information sources in this age of doctors polling about the use of Wikipedia and people thinking Google is an accurate and unbiased consumer health search engine.

When a Major League asterisk is next to Elsevier's name (are there other publishers at bat now?) for allegations of questionable credibility, we have to step up to the plate not only as individuals but with the voice of our professional organizations as well. This is especially crucial when Elsevier is a major sponsor of our own professional organization conference. Do we want our own individual and organizational integrity questioned by our users if we let this pass without official comment or action?

Friday Foolery #33: Kiki wishes all safe travels to MLA '09

Kiki (short for Waikiki) is one of my childhood dolls. My grandma loved to travel and always brought me a 'native' doll from wherever she went. I kept every single one and they are on three shelves of a display case in our living room. I don't remember her giving Kiki to me so since she is soft with no pointy edges or detachable parts & named for where she's from (like Jamaica, another cloth doll) I'm going to guess I was about 3 years old.

Anyone recognize the MLA hand sanitizer? Who knew the swag bag goodies from the New Member's Breakfast at MLA '08 in Chicago could turn out to be so prophetic! The ring is from the Sisterhood of the Flowery Cupcake Rings. You had to be there to understand that one, and they claim they'll bring their rings to MLA '09 so if you spot one say hi! All of them will affirm I'm even more of a lunatic in person than I am online. I was the one who brought the cupcakes, after all.

I won't be going to MLA '09 this year by choice as I am actively researching and preparing for my time on the other side of the country at the bioinformatics fellowship in Woods Hole later this month. I also want to enjoy my husband's birthday, my birthday, and our son launching a rocket (not NIH-strength) as part of his very first Scouting graduation ceremony here at home.

I may be obsessed with health informatics (and bacon), but family is always my life.

CE 2.0 for Web 2.0 - Check out these free modules!

The Medical Library Association Task Force on Social Networking Software is offering another round of free continuing education classes in January through April. This time they are stand-alone modules covering media sharing, web collaboration tools, wikis and blogs. Check out the details and be sure to register by February 9th for the web collaboration class. Looks great!

NAHIT vs. medical librarians for PHR: Advantage NAHIT

Back on June 16th I shared what the National Alliance for Health Information Technology's (NAHIT) workgroups proposed for uniform definitions for healthcare information infrastructure, including the personal health record (PHR).

On October 15th, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Southeast Atlantic Region (NN/LM SEA) shared what a joint task force of the Medical Library Association (MLA) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) proposed for the definition of an PHR.

Let's compare the two:

NAHIT

Personal Health Record (PHR): An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be drawn from multiple sources while being managed, shared, and controlled by the individual.

MLA-NLM Task Force

Electronic Personal Health Record (PHR): PHR is a private, secure application through which an individual may access, manage and share his/her health information. The PHR can include information that is entered by the consumer and/or data from other sources such as pharmacies, labs, and care providers. The PHR might or might not include information from the electronic health record (EHR) which is maintained by the health care provider and is not synonymous with the HER. PHR sponsors include vendors who may or may not charge a fee, health care organizations such as hospitals and health insurance companies, or employers.

Both are written as found with no editing or emphasis from me. I'm assuming HER in the latter quote is a typo, and one I may understand the origin of since I recently attended a forum (will blog about it soon!) where Word kept auto-correcting EHR to HER and it nearly drove me insane.

When it comes to explaining what a PHR is to the general public and not other people in the medical field, librarianship or information technology, I'm not sure either definition will be sufficient as a stand alone. I see a stronger possibility of "...what?" being their response to the one from the medical librarians with 4 sentences and 3 variables vs. NAHIT's single sentence with no variables.

I studied Pogue's Anti-Jargon Dictionary and think NAHIT's 'interoperability' may fall in alignment with his 'Functionality' complaint. Clarifying the 'multiple sources' as being healthcare-related would help so it's not totally arbitrary. The Social Security Administration will not suddenly suddenly plunk your disability information in your PHR... at least I hope not.

On the other hand, we in medical librarianship are fond of calling people 'consumers'... so why did the definition include both 'individuals' and 'consumers' for describing the same population? Was it really necessary to include all the 'and/or', 'might or might not', 'may or may not' variables up front for a basic definition? Why are we mentioning an electronic health record (EHR) in the definition for a PHR without also defining an EHR beyond something 'maintained by the health care provider', thus putting prior assumption on the consumer/individual to know exactly what that entails?

I am all for promotion of consumer health resources as part of PHR applications, but what exactly is the 'information assistance statement' that is being sent to these organizations to include in PHRs?

Am I a traitor to my field in respectfully disagreeing with the members of the joint task force about their definition for PHRs and wanting to use NAHIT's?

Delicious & MLAWeb2.0 Tagging

From the recent Medical Library Association (MLA) Focus, which I almost missed, is something available for everyone to use as a resource on Delicious that I thought needed a shoutout in case it hit your spam filter as well:

Are you a Delicious user? Contribute to the Web 2.0 Resources page by
tagging bookmarks you think MLA members should see with the tag
"mlaweb2.0." The MLA Web 2.0 Resources page will be displaying the most
recent bookmarked links. What you should consider tagging: examples of
medical library blogs, wikis, or social bookmarking tool uses; other
good Web 2.0 examples from medical libraries; or simply any good
articles, blog posts, or tools you think are beneficial for MLA members
to see. Check out what's already been bookmarked by MLA Task Force on
Social Networking Software members and other MLA contributors.

Cool! This could also be an RSS feed to keep an eye on since we can't add mlaweb2.0 as a person to our network. I wish there was a way to set up group account options in Delicious, then have frequency of mention indicated as there are already a few website duplications and I'm sure there will be more now that this has been publicized for all of us to share in. Since medical librarians are the main contributors to this project, one can hope that (unlike general population folksonomy tagging) frequency IS a good indicator of high quality resources.

I'm also interested in this project from a sociocultural anthropology perspective but I won't get into too much detail there. Are there even online community sociocultural anthropologists? What behavior drives what we choose to share as important with our online peer group via this method? Completely fascinating thoughts to me that probably bore most everyone else to tears!

Cajun sashimi: Freshly (un?)seasoned & ready to roll

I want to begin by thanking T.Scott for the comment he left on my entry about communication and change to let me know that

... the vision he [immediate past Medical Library Association (MLA) president Mark Funk, referral to last post] has for the association is strongly shared by the board of directors and headquarters staff, but it'll take the involvement of people like you to help make it happen. Associations move & change slowly and we all get frustrated with it at times, but the commitment to make the changes we need to make is definitely there.

This is truly heartening to know because to be perfectly honest I have no clear sense of 'What now?' with MLA since our 2008 conference ended. I'm new here; I don't know how much weight the current/elected/immediate past presidency carries, exactly how directors factor into the leadership equation or how they get to be there, and what they stand for as a collective whole. I know the current/elected decide committee members on a national level, and I know who our current president is. However, I wasn't able to hear her inaugural speech and no one else has said anything about it online that I've read. Why is this?

I also have to smile at Mark's response to Gail's question about what "younger" means with

...“seasoning” comes from life experience as well as years in the profession. But by using Web 2.0 tools – opening up participation in the many units of MLA beyond the appointed members – younger and unseasoned members can not only get a quicker grasp of how MLA “works,” they can begin offering us their opinions and ideas more easily and earlier in their careers than before.

I'm not younger; in fact I jumped up a demographic bar right in the middle of all the Chicago festivities and didn't know until it was in my face on a slide during a plenary session the day after my birthday. Talk about a depressing revelation! Life experience, on the other hand, I have in spades as does Gail when she began her medlib career and so do numerous others... just not in this profession which I have only been able to claim a professional part of for a whopping month. Not under 10 or 5 years or even a year, a month. Get me started on human resources, hospital systems, PHI, HIPAA, EMRs and a variety of other issues that are directly relevant to our field, though, and you'll never get me to shut up.

What am I? When in doubt I turn to fusion cuisine, so an image of Cajun sashimi came to mind: a blend of cultures leading to a strongly seasoned life with the freshest of unseasoned careers. It works, I'm already a fusion of Texan education with a West coast life to be an Eagle Dawg, right?

With this in mind I read comments like Michelle's on The Krafty Librarian's blog of

I didn't have a chance to go to the New Member Breakfast, but did attended the New Member SIG meeting and was surprised to find only a handful of people!

I've confessed this in several venues already but will here as well. I was a student member of MLA since fall 2006 through graduation just 5 months ago, and until the New Member Breakfast on May 18th this year I had no clue what the difference was between a Section and a Special Interest Group (SIG), nor did I think students were welcome to either. This impression is from someone who received a full-ride health informatics fellowship and was always in touch with a number of incredibly helpful people filling me in on all sorts of information about the field.

Why? Do you see any explanation, let alone mention, of what sections or SIGs are on the MLA page for students where we are encouraged to connect, ask questions and learn about the field? They are only mentioned in passing as an opportunity on the page to sign up as a student member. This does not convey sincere openness for genuine involvement but an afterthought, and it's one that has stayed with me as I've made the transition from student to professional this year. Could this help explain why so few people were at the New Member SIG meeting?

First impressions are lasting, and if the website is going to be one of our recruiting tools to point to as an information resource we seriously need to work on MLA's. I want to help and even now... I don't know how. MLANET's Editorial Board information is current to 2006/07.

What now?

MLA & Medical Librarians: Running the trains but missing the passengers?

The theme for the Medical Library Association under our current president Mark Funk, AHIP, is Only Connect with a focus on using web 2.0 tools to connect within our membership. A great overview of his inaugural speech is over at omg tuna is kewl. Side note: if you don't already read Wondermark, you're missing out!

However, in the midst of our renewed focus of connecting with our colleagues online, we need to keep an eye out for our users who are also there. We are taught reference interviewing and how to observe body language and other non-visual cues to proactively offer service to hesitant users in person, but how about online?

When Kevin, M.D. (a primary care physician blogger) posted PubMed and its search engine that he found via White Coat Notes (a Boston-area medical news site) posted on the blogs, my journalism background thought 5 Ws/H? (Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?) while my poser geek/medical librarian background thought This wouldn't have been reposted by at least 2 other blogs had there not been a level of belief in the newsworthiness of and/or agreement with the original source...

The original source is from a Harvard Medical School PhD student who posted I Am Not Yelling. Not Out Loud. with some understandable dissertation research frustration regarding PubMed's search engine. The post, comments and responses from the original author speak for themselves, and (as I expected) several medical librarians had already posted offering assistance to her.

What I found of particular interest was the author's response to one of the offers for help of At the moment, I have neither a medical librarian to bother nor the time to do it in. I hope I make it through the next month on the rudimentary knowledge I do have.

Harvard has plenty of medical librarians at the Countway Library of Medicine.

Why none of the other medical librarians recommended that the author contact Countway perplexed me. If you were a Harvard passenger, would you be more willing to board a train whose destination is unknown or one headed straight for Harvard? What could be done to have the passenger know that the Harvard train is there in the first place, and would be happy to have her on board to reach her destination quickly?

Connection outreach opportunity! I used the contact form on Countway's site to let them know of the original author's blog entry last night with a note that 2 other medical blogs had cited her, and in the morning received a response from a librarian there of Thanks for the heads-up. I have sent her an email outlining what we can do for her.

I hope this helps both the author with her dissertation research and Countway regarding not only their services outreach, but considering ways to keep a finger on the pulse of their own users' online medical community for signs of help.

How are we checking the information vitals of our own academic, regional and other online medical communities? Have we lost sight of the passengers for operating the trains? If we want to not just survive but thrive, both are of equal importance.

A new flight

The intended purpose of this blog is to be my starting point for the Web 2.0 101 continuing education class for the Medical Library Association, but who knows what direction the field or my studies may take me from here.

I've been blogging off and on since 1996 or so. Back then I hammered out HTML by hand to give brief updates to IRC friends about what I was up to, and that's pretty much the extent of my personal blogging now. The evidence is in the WayBackMachine and I'm not sharing it here ;) When I first heard the term 'blog' back in those ancient days, I thought it meant a backup log of activity on web servers so I did not consider myself a blogger. I still don't think of myself as a 'real' blogger because, for the time being, I don't have practical deep and profound brain things inside my head about the medical library profession since I'm not actually in it yet. I'm full of theory as any new graduate who is considered young by our profession's standards should be, but old enough to keep quiet and observe for now without expounding in public.

Welcome aboard for the ride!