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.

PubMed Preview Goes Stampeding

Circus elephants need to eat too via c.a.muller

Like retweets through the Twitterverse, so is the elephant stampeding through the information silos of our lives - my current Facebook status.

Edit: I've since learned an entirely different webcast was the source for this information, but it was offered by staff at NCBI. The one I mentioned below was publicly available for a time as well. None of this changes the fact that a streamlined and effective communication policy is needed!

I shouldn't be surprised that the PubMed preview was leaked before the National Library of Medicine (NLM) was ready for the public to know about it via a link from the main PubMed website.

The discussion first began on Twitter this afternoon with the beginning and a sample of how it quickly spread.

Then it popped up in Facebook links.

Then the blogs from Emerging Technologies Librarian, NLM Toolbars and David Rothman, with many more to come I'm sure.

MEDLIB-L should catch up either sometime tonight or tomorrow.

There is one important point of clarification that needs to be made regarding the source though.

The preview website was not disclosed via any public webinar from NLM. I will always share any public information possible as fast as I can, especially when it comes to something we've been waiting for since May.

That 'webinar' was an internal, private staff meeting via web conference last week that was recorded for other staff members to watch if they weren't able to attend. Someone, in my not so humble opinion, made a very serious error in sharing that recording with everyone and to be honest I'm angry about it.

Why? I was the one on the web conference who asked about the preview URL being live and whether or not it should be promoted. The answer was no because bugs are still being worked out with it. What you see may not be what you eventually get. Confidentiality and integrity are at the core of librarianship and business; of course I wanted to share this with the world but I didn't. I still haven't linked directly to the preview site here.

Public URLs want to be free as does information. I keep trying to advocate for clear communication and social media presence. To be fair, @NLM_SIS and @medlineplus4you are on board which is great. The elephant in the medical librarian world is PubMed though, and today we've seen how important it is for things to remain on the development server until they're ready for the world and the need for information to be shared from an authoritative source in social media right from the start.

Friday No-Foolery #49: MedlinePlus on Twitter!

With thanks to Shamsha for the heads up, it is so cool to see MedlinePlus on Twitter as of today at @medlineplus4you!



Check out their new logo and colors, confirmed via a direct message from the Twitter account to me when I promoted the site and asked about it of 'You're right about the logo - it's part of our new branding and future site redesign.'

I can't think of a better time for quality consumer health information to be offered via Twitter directly from MedlinePlus than when North America is going back to school and concerned about the flu. Way to go and welcome!

Friday Foolery #45: Pants!

'Tis true. I spent the whole week without any pants on which is an extreme rarity for me.

Skirts and shorts are the only way to go when you have no air conditioning at home and temperatures are in the 90s every day. It then soared to 103 (officially, our house had 104) on July 29th, the hottest day ever recorded in Seattle.

On the plus side, I did get some funky abs toning thanks to daily Slip-n-Slide sessions with the family. On the negative I'm quite sleep deprived, am going in to work today solely for the air conditioning since I normally telecommute on Fridays, and neither hot coffee nor bacon sound all that great. The horror!

Friday Foolery #44: Twitter

Inspired by the aftermath of


Am I done?

Ha! Stay tuned for Monday.

An Open Letter to Clinical Reader

July 19 '09 7:00am edit

Twitter links below have broken due to constantly changing Clinical Reader accounts so I have linked to screenshots.

The latest account on Twitter states that the previous www.twitter.com/clinicalreader account is unaffiliated with the real website and that they haven't officially started tweeting yet.

A screencast of the website's Google cache, dated July 17, 2009 1:43:11 GMT, scrolls to the bottom of the page to show their link to a Twitter account with a url of www.twitter.com/clinicalreader.


July 17 '09 6:40pm edit

Twitter links below have been changed from @clinicalreader to @clinical_tweets. The original account was apparently deleted then reinstated with a new name, and there's a different @clinicalreader account now.

Dear Whoever Is In Charge,

Previously, with your permission, I posted your co-founder's email apology for your company threatening me on Twitter. That was as a result of my critique of your online information resource that implied an endorsement from a United States government agency that does not issue them to commercial services, and using copyrighted images without permission from their creators.

I found two of those images although there were three including the image your company took, altered, told the owner of the image it was a purchased stock photo, then finally removed it.

I replied to accept your co-founder's apology (my reply is here) and stated at the time I also accept inclusion in the medical librarian's section of your page. At the time I believed your company was sincere, learning from mistakes made, and intending to conduct both your online information resource and social media communication channel with integrity and professional responsibility.

That was a false belief as your company has shown over the course of this week.

I have edited a Google Doc that I believe is the source information for the proposed medical librarian section. I no longer wish to be included. Some of the reasons why include your company making a mockery of your threat to me as 'all very funny and great PR', falsely attributing it to Ben Henley, then after 'taking control from... Canadians' (screenshot) once more twisting the words of others to imply endorsement for your company. I have permission from Martha to post the following screenshots since she has a private account:





Your company refers to your information resource as an 'authoritative source' (Beginnings, About) yet nowhere within your website do you identify yourselves by name nor the institutions you are affiliated with so users may verify your level of authority for themselves. Who are you and your Editorial Team (screenshot)? Where are you located?

Your contact information says to contact you via email and Twitter (your 'dedicated beta feedback form' goes to kampyle.com and nothing specific), yet your company now says 'pls use official channels' (screenshot). What are those official channels? Why are you 'happy to be open' one moment then 'not like your predecessors pls use official channels' (screenshot) the next since taking control from the Canadians? When will you decide upon your 'official channels' and have a consistent message to send across all of them?

How is Clinical Reader is an 'authoritative' resource that 'respects all copyrights and legal restrictions on content and access'? (source)

It is not by assessment measures for health information website quality I'm aware of as a librarian. Your website fails all of the Medical Library Association's suggested criteria for identifying sponsorship, for example.

Clinical Reader has, however, become a case study for why a company's social media presence should be included as part of information resource quality assessment measures. Iris is right on track except for one thing: it's not 'hundreds of people have gone from knowing nothing about this service to being sure that everyone at Clinical Reader is completely insane.'

As of Friday morning it's 3,031 people with 3,990 page views on Monday's critique according to Google Analytics.


Sincerely,

Nicole Dettmar, MSIS

Gratitude

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it, by*MizzEl*

What I had to say about Clinical Reader was not of massive importance.

It was a website evaluation and critique, something that librarians, students, journalists and everyone else should be doing on an automatic cognitive basis millions of times a day. My intent is and always will be education, and hopefully both my colleagues and the world now clearly know that United States government organizations do not endorse products or services. [edit: and using copyrighted sources for your own use without the creator's permission isn't cool either!]

What so many of you had to say when I was threatened as a result of my post is important.

I must say thanks for the immediate public support on Twitter to Jacqueline (multiple times), Rachel (likewise), Steve, John (and Patrick's RT), Peter, who brings up something about libraries I didn't see before; Nick (LOL), Amy (ha!), Amy, Connie (also multiple times), Sarah, Shamsha, Martha, Andrew, Erika, Luke, Mark, Laura, Sarah, all of you who commented on these related discussion threads, and everyone else I've likely missed. I wish I could thank you all personally. It is quite humbling to know I am part of an international network of information professionals that is so much greater than I.

I am thankful for blog coverage from Steve, Alan and David for those who aren't on Twitter, which is the overwhelming majority of librarians who should be aware of things like this happening in social media but were probably off in Chicago at the American Library Association conference.

For numerous private messages of support, and especially the dropped jaws and 'WHAT?!'s from my colleagues who are part of my everyday personal life... thank you.

I also must say thanks to Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre of Bad Science.

There was an interesting conversation that occurred yesterday about just what endorsement means and other topics between Ben and Clinical Reader. Some of the tweets have now been deleted.

However, I recorded them all earlier thanks to QuoteURL: one, two, three, and four.

Clinical Reader: Starry ethics fail

July 17 '09 7:40am edit

Closing this entry with an open letter to Clinical Reader.

July 15 '09 7:20am edit

Thank you for your support!

July 14 '09 3:42pm edit

With permission from the author, here is the email apology I received this morning from Clinical Reader. I have replied that I accept it.

I would also like to note that there is mention of the above apology on Twitter yet still not a public apology to me as there was for one of the artists yesterday.


July 13 '09 4:00pm edit:



As of this time, Clinical Reader is or already has removed all images I discussed below from their website. I commend them for their quick attention and responsiveness.

However, there was this before that:




I do not remove my blog articles. I am happy to edit when information within them is in need of updating, as am I doing now, or corrections with clear markings as to what is original and what is corrected.

Others speak well about that legal ramifications part.


Original, unedited post below

It is with concern that I've heard about some of my colleagues promoting and collaborating with the newly launched company, Clinical Reader.

Why? (red scrawl emphasis mine)


This above-the-page-fold graphic is intentional (not accidental, this is clear marketing intent to lend quick visual credibility to the organization) and currently displayed everywhere (homepage, sections pages, multimedia page, the newsletter, etc.) throughout the resource.

It is bogus as far as the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is concerned since the U.S. Government doesn't endorse or grant 5 stars to anything. The NLM Copyright Information page offers more elaboration, bold emphasis mine:

Endorsement: NLM does not endorse or recommend any commercial products, processes, or services. The views and opinions of authors expressed on NLM Web sites do not necessarily state or reflect those of the U.S. Government, and they may not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

But wait, there's more.

Clinical Reader also currently uses two copyrighted images on their Partners (specific original source, copyright notice at bottom) and Advertising pages (from somewhere on Signalnoise). A 'credit' link to a source doesn't honor an image copyright. Even free open source images, such as this set of Springer Images, are often limited to usage for noncommerical purposes. Commercial organizations can well afford to purchase or design their own graphics.

As a medical librarian, I respectfully request that Clinical Reader remove all occurrences of these images from their website immediately. If not, this is my statement of intent that I'll request removal of my blog from their proposed medical librarian resources. I have already notified NLM and the artists involved about these images. All have replied and thanked me for doing so, one noting "They might have credited me, but not cool using my work to sell something."

I uphold the Medical Library Association code of ethics, the Library Society of the World Cod of Ethics, and my professional photographer friends deal with people stealing their copyrighted work all the time. Professional integrity means taking a stand to explain who, what, where, when & why when something is amiss. I'm a bit more direct than some.

Always carefully review new resources (and re-evaluate the old ones from time to time) for information. Any company that falsifies endorsements and displays copyrighted materials for their own use should raise immediate red flags for librarians. How does it reflect on our profession to recommend a resource that is not compliant for accountability to clinicians, faculty, students and your own colleagues regardless of how nice it looks and functions?

An Aggie does not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do. - Aggie Code of Honor, Texas A&M University, recipient of a 2003 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant that funded my MSIS education in partnership with the University of North Texas.

Medlibs Round: PubMed and Discoveries

PubMed class at StanfordEdTech

It is a pleasure and honor to host Medlibs Round here at Eagle Dawg Blog after a few delays I apologize for. The theme this month is PubMed, one of several databases in the the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Entrez life sciences search engine developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), and third party functionalities.

There is much more to the NLM than this single database though, and understanding the Entrez connectivity helps to explain some of the changes that are happening in PubMed today to lead to more research and better medicine for tomorrow. I hope you enjoy the ride!

What is this "Discovery" stuff NLM keeps mentioning?

NCBI's "Discovery Space" Facilitating SNP Research

The above chart refers to information in genetics but it was the 'discovery space' label that caught my attention. This illustrates NCBI's main purpose as not solely being the PubMed administrator but developing resources "for the better understanding of molecular processes affecting human health and disease" (source) which involves information in the other Entrez resources.

In December 2008, I did some research on the Discovery Initiative, "one of the most important projects NLM is working on." If you're not already familiar with the Discovery Initiative please take a look and here's the gist of it:

The bottom line for us is discovery. We want people to make discoveries, and if we’re using up real estate on the Web page for things people don’t click on, and if we can put things on there that would have been associated information, then we should do that.

The Discovery Initiative is behind some of what we are seeing with PubMed changes now after several years of work behind the scenes to encourage cross-referencing within Entrez. We are also starting to see communication from NLM including reference to the Discovery Initiative and suggested resources that appear in PubMed being called Ads. There still is not a clear description/explanation of the Discovery Initiative from a PubMed perspective in either the NLM Technical Bulletin or PubMed New/Noteworthy RSS feed, the resources we're encouraged to subscribe to for current PubMed news. The Discovery Initiative has received coverage in NCBI News in June, March, and February 2009.

Discovery is in the eye of the beholder

Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) seal on the Lillie Laboratory

With that background about the Discovery Initiative covered, Shamsha Damani at MD Anderson created a very clear guide and commentary for her clinicians about the recent and upcoming changes in PubMed: What's New and What's Ahead, These include a great description and screenshots of the Discovery Initiative ads with the suggestion that "they are handy and are a great discovery tool when you are grasping at straws or have too many results to wade through." PubMed: My NCBI changes by Miner Library mentions the new ability to create custom filters as "a terrific new development."

Custom filters in PubMed. Fail. by Mark Rabnett of Gossypiboma begged to differ with this assessment of the custom filter changes due to encountering a failure with the saved searches tab.

In the second incident of NLM staff replying to blog complaints that I know of (the Harvard student being the first), an anonymous comment (supposedly a developer at NLM) was left on Mark's post saying the problem would be fixed. Shortly thereafter Mark posted PubMed custom filters: where the bee sucks which includes

I must apologize for the flippant remarks I made in my previous post. It must have been the nicotine. I hope that the snag with the NLM health literacy filter can be fixed. I intend to use Custom Filters frequently and uncomplainingly when all the kinks are worked out.

In a second comment, the supposed NLM developer replied

Enjoy your filters, and thank twitter’s re-tweets for getting your message across.

Why not have an official PubMed Twitter presence to directly offer feedback in the first place? Clearly someone there wants to engage. Often we hear complaints about PubMed and related services but with the email-only "official" feedback channel frequently is no acknowledgment from either NLM or users that a problem is taken care of, nor a way for others to see if an issue is Down for everyone or just me.

What's your Discovery?

Blue lobster at the Woods Hole Science Aquarium

PubMed Impact Factor from Alisha764's Blog explores the role of offering impact factors of journals and author information as a quality indicator in the wake of fake articles, journals and changed/fabricated data. This is not without controversy but indicates that many are seeking additional ways to check the quality of information. Merely saying something is indexed in MEDLINE is not enough to say it is authoritative health information since Time Magazine is there in the consumer health subset.

Five ways to improve PubMed from Gossypiboma includes his top results from the brainstorming suggestions during the recent Canadian Health Libraries Association conference about improving PubMed. A trick for #5 (Simplify the creation of permanent links to PubMed records) is to begin with http://pubmed.gov, take a look at an article for the PubMed identification number (PMID), then tack that on to the end for http://pubmed.gov/16719081

Shamsha Damani's guide includes

My one hope is to see NLM participate more in social media (especially Twitter!) so more voices are heard. The NLM reps at MLA’09 were extremely nice and open to suggestions; it would be nice if they could extend their presence in social networking venues as well.

I share this sentiment about social media as an official feedback channel for PubMed. This should not be via anonymous comments to blog entries but a sustained, active effort by both NLM and PubMed users utilizing some of the best practices learned from online participation formats such as the Open Government Dialogue.

There is hope for change on this front with the emergence of official Department of Health and Humans Services (HHS) Twitter accounts. @NLM_SIS is a legitimate account from Specialized Information Services (as is their SlideShare account... check out Semantic Processing of Twitter Traffic for Epidemic Surveillance) although considered experimental at this time. For the time being many, but not all, government agency presences on Twitter are essentially push-out news information sources similar to RSS feeds that don't usually interact with followers.

What have third party vendors Discovered?

Fiddler crabs in the Marine Resources Center at MBL

Got PubMed? Pubget Searches and Delivers Scientific PDFs from Bio-IT World news shares the news that this full-text PDF retrieval service has expanded quite a bit from when David Rothman covered it in April 2008, and has just announced it has partnered with 500 institutions including NIH itself (NLM is one of the 27 institutes of the National Institutes of Health).

Hope Leman posted GoPubMed: Interview with Michael Alvers at Next Generation Science where she asked some great questions of GoPubMed's CEO about why medical librarians and others should use this search engine instead of regular PubMed in addition to theoretical (the blended future role of search engine and social networking) to the practical (What's the difference between "find all" and "get all"?). This is a comprehensive interview well worth reading and reflecting upon over a coffee break.

Some non-PubMed but related tangents that were submitted along the discovery lines include Dr Shock MD PhD's posting about Online Medical Book Search and Clinical Cases and Images Blog's coverage of how to Create an automatic differential diagnosis list with Google Squared.


Panel at the MBL Associates Gift shop, home of cool socks

I recently attended the MBL/NLM BioMedical Informatics course and am still reflecting upon what Dr. Don Lindberg, Director of NLM, said regarding the emerging role of interactive publications. Wouldn't embedding an actual rhythm strip in a journal article involving electrocardiograms be a better use of online publications than a snapshot of one still image? I'll conclude with this image from his presentation:


You have seen what everyone else has seen. What do you think?

MBL/NLM MI Day 1: What's biomedical informatics anyway?

While I've simultaneously been excited about and scared of my time as a Marine Biological Laboratory/National Library of Medicine (MBL/NLM) fellow, I've never had a quick and easy way to say exactly what it is I'm studying here this week.

After our first full day of class, I still don't.

This is Dr. Jim Cimino at the beginning of our session mapping out our class answers to 'What is Biomedical informatics?'. Please note that all our presentation links won't last forever, if you see something you like grab it now.


That's about half the whiteboard and the other half has just as much scrawl to it. There is no elevator speech answer! Jim also did a great job in his afternoon database design presentation, and I'm remembering his class exercise activity on mapping out tables for a database with a Medline citation as a model to work from in my own teaching.

This is Dr. Joyce Mitchell's great bioinformatics presentation about genetics and the exciting opportunities that are in development now about research in the field and for us to think about how to integrate them into electronic medical records (EMRs).


Unfortunately I can't remember if the slide that was added in was part of Sid Phillips's presentation or Victor Cid's about the Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC). It noted that 'swine flu' was the most-searched topic on Yahoo at one point, displacing 'American Idol', the Wikipedia swine flu page received 1.3 million hits, and Twitter had 125,000 swine flu tweets a day accounting for 1% of total traffic there.

This is both of them at the beginning of Victor's presentation which I highly recommend, very cutting edge information about the use of Web 2.0 technologies in disaster communication.


We also watched the University of Michigan's Health Sciences Library's YouTube video about Second Life and Public Health

Whew! Enough of all that, here is the beautiful setting of Woods Hole looking out across the Great Harbor.

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.

91 years: Reflections on Influenza & Information

Seattle Times, Dan Eskenazi

These post-Edwardian ladies (look carefully, also the two cats!) are wearing face masks by order of the Seattle mayor when the Spanish flu hit here in October 1918.

Our 6-year-old son came home from school today and informed me that his first grade classmate (the same one he got in trouble for kissing earlier this year) told him there's a very sad problem where people in Mexico have swine flu and some of them have even died. He confirmed that his teacher hasn't talked about the flu with the class and we've been trying to keep the panicky news headlines away from him.

I thought of the masked ladies (and cats) and wondered what my great-grandparents told my grandparents during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 since they were about the same age as our son is now. No family stories of that time have been passed down through the years.

What, then, can I tell him about now when we're one level away from a pandemic according to the World Health Organization? The same thing I always have since he was old enough to walk and talk: Wash your hands and keep them out of your eyes, nose & mouth!

That, and Mama's trying to help share accurate health information on a wiki, tweeting about it, and some people in Germany quickly noticed. Major kudos to EBSCO for DynaMed free swine flu resources.

Can you imagine what impact instant global health news and information sharing might have had in 1918?

What lies ahead for even better information sharing in the future that will make our current technology tools laughingly obsolete?

Edit: Within an hour after writing & posting this, the announcement that probable H1N1 is in Seattle was made!

A Cup of Tea... for Thanks

Tea party, by emkeller

I cannot write about today's 'tea bagging' and protest 'tea parties' with a straight face (I prefer my tea brewed loose leaf and parties with bite sized pastries & sandwiches with gossip about friends of friends) but in the spirit of the day I will drink some tea on this tax day with immense gratitude.

Why? If it were not for my own and millions of other Americans' tax dollars, I would not have received my full time graduate education. I am one of 3,220 master's students funded by the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program since 2003, one of the largest programs of the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). I do not see this merely as slanted political hype on my resume but an investment in my potential that I aim to have a very high return on.

The story continues with my first library job at one of the eight federally contract-funded regional offices of the National Network of Libraries of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM). I work with amazing colleagues in my own office, all other seven offices, and at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) itself. While I appreciated my previous career of a decade, I am truly inspired by the intelligence and dedication of my Network colleagues from coast to coast. They have welcomed me in despite my blatant newbieness and they know how to have some serious fun. I can't imagine having my social network completely overrun by colleagues from my previous career and enjoying it nearly as much as I do now.

Live outside of the United States? Great, but thank an American taxpayer today if you use information from PubMed, MedlinePlus, Healthfinder, one of the 27 NIH agencies (National Institutes of Health) or the other 10 HHS agencies (Department of Health & Human Services, here are some on Twitter). Those aren't your electronic database subscription fees paying towards their development and maintenance, nor are these information resources and the people behind them remotely close to "free."

America, these are your tax dollars at work. Thank you. I have said it before and I will say it again: I have not and never will write here on federal taxpayer time, ever. I take that very seriously. I do hit the 'publish' button in blog comment emails, strive to share & help with information on Twitter more than goof off, and poke around Facebook much less these days since I can't stand the new layout.

ACRL 2009 - Social Networking Literacy Competencies for Librarians

Excellent, thought-provoking papers about the use of social networking in the library and by librarians by both speakers that were well worth dragging my still-sick self out of bed and onto a Metro bus to slog through the rain at 8am on a Saturday morning for!

As usual, some teaser thoughts from my notes (can you tell my brain is on format autopilot?)

• It is not enough to know what social networking is but able to understand nature and roles, importance in research, communication and information life cycle of the social networking site.
• We have to evaluate the tools just as we do everything else and not jump on board just because it's new.
• Librarians who are social networking-literate must be able to apply their current skills and curiosity to emerging and evolving resources.
• Professional associations and library schools can support librarians with CE initiatives
• Require new hires to possess social networking skills (yikes!)
• How frequently do students use Facebook for academic purposes? Most ranked rarely and they feel Facebook impacts their academic study negatively.
• When developing a virtual presence, consider students' actual perceptions of the library. Talk to your students, not student workers or this study's students.
• Becoming a fan of the library involves less effort/awkwardness than friending.
• Don't send apps or poke the students on Facebook.

My thoughts - It is impossible to verify with 100% accuracy any institutional online presence on Twitter. An individual may use a library or library product name, create a profile with the company logo, link to the company website and fill out all the appropriate profile details, follow (and be followed by) others in the field and 'talk the talk'... and not be sanctioned by the library or institution to represent them at all.

I am not going to give further attention to the individuals on Twitter I'm aware of who have done so with National Library of Medicine (NLM) by linking to them here, but be aware that they do exist. As it was in January and still the case now, there is no official NLM presence on Twitter.

Blog-o-Remiss-a-Versary Time!

(Snowflake cupcake @ abakedcreation)

Here's what I'm still in a state of disbelief about

• I've been blogging here for 1 year today
• People actually read what I write (I think)
• People share with others what I write here (thanks AEA) and on Twitter
• I've been able to know many wonderful people around the world because of this blog
• I've been in remission from Löfgren’s syndrome* for 8 years this month

Here's what I'll do my best to continue until the next blog-o-remiss-a-versary

• Share coverage of conferences, classes & events I'm at that are helpful to know about
• Strongly advocate for the credibility of appropriate social media channels for outreach, education, feedback & evaluation
• Not reinvent the wheel by 100% rehashing what others have already said well
• Respect and value your time and perspectives
  
• Welcome more guest blog entries (I'm looking at another Eagle, you know who you are!)
• Share my abiding love & learning of health informatics (and bacon)
• Fridays are meant for Foolery
• Stay healthy

Are you with me still?

Thank you. I sincerely and humbly appreciate it.

*Löfgren’s syndrome - an acute form of sarcoidosis. I was diagnosed as stage II in 1999 but symptomatic by the summer of 1998 before it simmered down only to later appear severely with every Löfgren’s symptom at the same time. The snowflake is a symbol for sarcoid, each case is unique and I had it long before House made its obscurity trendy. The reality is sarcoid sucks. Despite extensive research they still don't really know what causes it, but it's likely I have the HLA-DRB1*03 allele and that combined with a trigger (possibly evergreens) led to a really scary few years. I never take health or the ability to breathe deep lungfulls of air for granted anymore.

Emergency preparedness: Library services at a glance (and a photo & tweet?)

It's been a while since I've touched on emergency preparedness here, and driving the web conference for work last week that covered the disaster communications plan that went into place during Hurricane Ike reminded me of that. I highly encourage checking out the Dragonfly to get the scoop on what's behind this scenario filter & how to make your own for your library (click to enlarge).




Including these as part of an emergency procedures binder (maybe even a wiki!) could be a very valuable and easy way to provide information to colleagues at other institutions who are often eager to help you after disaster strikes.

I haven't forgotten about the use of Flickr for sharing photos in the wake of a disaster, and you may have heard about how a photo on Twitter broke the news about the plane crash in the Hudson River last month. I'm not currently aware of anyone writing up these or other social networking & media methods up as part of emergency preparedness plans, but think they've certainly shown a high return on very little investment and should be considered.

2/27 edit: Apparently I was picking up the Twitter/social media emergency communication vibes from the Seattle Times while I was writing this, check out the suggestion from a King County council member below in response to some bus service meltdowns due to snow in Seattle yesterday

"Given the increasing sophistication of modern phones and wireless Internet providers, I encourage Metro to take immediate action to use instant messaging, Twitter, neighborhood blogs, and customer self-reporting systems to keep Metro operators and riders connected," Constantine said in a statement.

He said inexpensive ways exist to reach riders. "It doesn't seem like they've got people who are savvy at that."

Hidden in the Bookshelf: PubMed & Discovery Initiative

Many thanks go out to Kathel Dunn, Associate Fellowship Coordinator at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), who sent me an email and Amy Donahue, Associate Fellow at NLM, who wrote a #pubmed tag on Twitter (what does that mean?) at about the same time this morning.



The news?

Buried within the NCBI Bookshelf, yet not the same as the Bookshelf announcement listserv or linked from the Bookshelf front page (check the 'breadcrumbs', or filepath below), are NCBI News archives including a February 2009 article with details about the Discovery Initiative and PubMed.



Please read Featured Resource: Improvements to NCBI Services Promote Discovery in its entirely (not too long & very informative) and click on the links of the PubMed screenshots highlighting the Document Summary view of the Gene Sensor, 'Also try..' and 'Recent Activity' in addition to the Abstract Plus summary view of the pre-computed Related Articles and Recent Activity. See how the article title is the hyperlink in the Document Summary view but not in Abstract Plus view as noted in the PubMed Update guide?

As an update regarding #pubmed on Twitter: I have heard from NLM that several there are 'aware of' this as a user feedback venue, yet feel that 'it is too brief.' Again, to my knowledge there is no official NLM presence on Twitter or other social media venues, although the National Institutes of Health (NIH, which includes NLM as 1 of 27 Institutes and Centers) does have two Twitter news accounts.

I offer as a contrast the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s involvement in social media, which David Rothman has covered well.

Andrew P. Wilson, who describes himself as "Member of HHS social media team," (The Department of Health and Human Services - HHS - includes NIH, CDC, FDA & many others) noticed that many people stopped following the FDA recalls Twitter account today. Note his approach to soliciting and responding to user feedback below (read from the bottom up):



Later he wrote as an additional response "Thanks - an experiment and there will be successes & failures (and in between). Appreciate everyones feedback, & support though."

An experiment. Willingness to try. Soliciting and appreciating user feedback. Placing so much information on a single page instead of having to dig through various venues to find relevant news.

Mr. Wilson, you have my thanks for your approach during the increasing number of peanut product recalls, and I hope NIH (and NLM) is included within the scope of the HHS social media team.

A tweet for change: #Pubmed

The official communication portal for your feedback to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) about PubMed is 'Write to the Help Desk' at the bottom of each PubMed page or via email to custserv@nlm.nih.gov This mechanism is helpful for NLM to have trackable data, much like the tickets that are generated by calls to the hospital IT services help desk, however this format doesn't allow for others to see what insights and challenges their colleagues are having.

Medical information professionals have multiple channels of communication ranging from international to regional, state & association listservs, reading each others' blogs, and social networking tools such as Twitter. We can and do share among ourselves! However, each of these communication methods can carry high levels of noise, or information that is neither concise nor relevant to what we are looking for in terms of helpful input.

As I previously explained in my PubMed and the Discovery Initiative post, behind-the-scenes work for the past few years is now manifesting itself in visible changes with PubMed. The main channel for communication from NLM regarding these changes is the NLM Technical Bulletin, where you can quickly browse PubMed-specific entries.

A thought I had for a quick, easy-to-contribute, low-noise feedback mechanism for everyone to see, participate in, and track via a webpage or RSS regarding PubMed is the use of hashtags on Twitter by including #pubmed in your tweet. The hashtagged word works for both a regular message (such as the one from me) and a reply, or @, message (such as the one from dial_m)

Going to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23pubmed
currently brings up the results since I pitched this idea to medlibs, a group Twitter account that David Rothman started & I now moderate:


The RSS feed is #pubmed - Twitter Search

Caveat 1: The 'hashtags' I'm referring to in my tweet is http://www.hashtags.org/tag/pubmed, where currently nothing is displayed. It should since there is reciprocal following of @hashtags on my Twitter account, which displays your hashtags even if you have a private Twitter account. Maybe their system is currently lagged when it comes to new entries?

Caveat 2: If you have a private Twitter account or are sending a group tweet message (such as on medlibs), your #Pubmed tag won't appear on the Twitter search results.

If all of the above didn't make much sense, check out Alison Aldrich's post on the Dragonfly for a great Twitter 101 introduction.

If it did make sense, please contribute your #pubmed thoughts on Twitter separate from your usual discussion of Pubmed (which is still searchable here)! To my knowledge there is not an official NLM presence on Twitter, but I will share this with NLM and encourage them to consider this as a type of social network feedback that is targeted and concise so they won't have to wade through a bunch of noise to get to the point.

More journalism news: A cup of Google tea with your Brazilian Second Life avatar?

I first learned via Wired Campus that Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist at Harvard, supposedly claimed that conducting two Google searches produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as bringing a kettle of water to a full boil. Since this was published in the United Kingdom's The Sunday Times (not to be confused with high quality journalism if you're unfamiliar with the UK), I guess they went with the tea aspect to appeal to their audience despite the fact that Harvard's up the road from the Boston Tea Party. Has anyone done an environmental impact study on that one?

I digress. I'll do that a lot with this particular entry, but it's to make a point about the authenticity of journalism when it comes to scientific research. Google replied via their blog that this wasn't the case, a single Google search only generates .2 grams of carbon dioxide.

According to Technology News, Mr. Wissner-Gross spent the majority of Monday trying to state the facts about his research study and how it was reported in The Sunday Times, among them these

One problem: the study's author, Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, says he never mentions Google in the study. "For some reason, in their story on the study, the Times had an ax to grind with Google," Wissner-Gross told TechNewsWorld. "Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site."

And the example involving tea kettles? "They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics," Wissner-Gross said.

Why Google in particular? I think Mr. Wissner-Gross nailed it on the head:

The short answer is, it's a really easy way to sell papers. Google is a very successful company and it's a very easy way to get readership by making grandiose claims about them.

A closer look at the Sunday Times article brings up a familiar hodgepodge journalism style I've had issues with before at Pew Internet: citing research from a respected authority source, then bringing in components of a completely different story and blending it all together as one. The Sunday Times' additional claims:

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.

“It’s not an unreasonable comparison,” said Liam Newcombe, an expert on data centres at the British Computer Society. “It tells us how much energy westerners use on entertainment versus the energy poverty in some countries.”

Though energy consumption by computers is growing - and the rate of growth is increasing - Newcombe argues that what matters most is the type of usage.

If your internet use is in place of more energy-intensive activities, such as driving your car to the shops, that’s good. But if it is adding activities and energy consumption that would not otherwise happen, that may pose problems.

Newcombe cites Second Life and Twitter, a rapidly growing website whose 3m users post millions of messages a month.

Personally, I'm surprised they didn't go after the #1 online bandwidth, energy and productivity-sucker there is according to my completely unscientific research and observation of my colleagues: checking out a suggested YouTube video then nonchalantly surfing the Related Videos that pop up after it.

My apologies if YouTube is blocked at your particular location due to those who have gone before you; and my suggestion on a quick way to make donuts per the embedded video below:



Where did you end up after that, if not at Krispy Kreme or trying not to sing 'b0rk b0rk b0rk' aloud while flinging pens at your colleagues?

Bottom line: Study the original research study publication whenever possible, especially if the soundbite you're picking up via a retweet on Twitter or an RSS headline news blurb is too catchy to be true, and question the credibility of all parties involved.

Friday Foolery #8: Phishing for Donuts & Bacon

It sometimes takes drastic and unusual measures to raise student awareness about issues. At the University of Virginia, Karen McDowell (a security analyst) & her $60 custom made purple fish costume went on a march to discuss the issues of phishing during Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Lest we think that everyone in the 21st century campus environment would know that phishing means scam emails trying to lure people into revealing passwords or even more sensitive data about themselves, McDowell reports "Sometimes I introduced myself as a fraudulent e-mail because many people don’t know what a phish is."

This is timely in light of a ruckus that broke out on Twitter two days ago. A system called Twitterank asks for your Twitter username & password (while providing a disclaimer) "to determine how worthy of a person you are in Twitterverse." I saw isolated tweets about people & their twitteranks earlier in the day, then by the end of the day saw other people saying it was a phishing scam. Yesterday, the Twitterank author had a say in his defense.

Social network analysis is a real and very complicated process, as I learned in an insanely overpacked conference room in Denver last Saturday. Twitterank and Twitter Grader seem to be stabs in this direction of measuring actors in a network of arcs, trying to determine the geodesic path of least resistance and most influence... or perhaps it's far less complicated and cuts to a core question of humanity that hasn't died since 5th grade: Am I popular?

My Twitterverse answer according to both services: I am still so not popular despite ditching the Coke bottle-thick glasses for gas permeable contacts and having a sharply straight smile after way too many years of braces. That's fine by me.

(Warning: The following is not a political endorsement nor for viewing by those under 19 years of age due to the risk of aging your arteries)

I also have a 22.5 BMI, yet was sent information about Weight Watchers by a former coworker then attacked by the red exercise ball of my colleague this morning. I was beginning to feel self-conscious until another colleague came to the rescue with the ultimate vision of sweet, glorious saturated fat: The Donuts and Bacon '08 T-Shirt advertisement. If this was a button or magnet, I'd be there even as I cringe at the thought of these two wonderful food items together at the same time.

Continuing with last week's theme (no guarantee for next week), here's a free MP3: the Donuts and Bacon song by James William Roy! All the unpopular of the world, sing along with me now...

All us losers and boozers and heroes can't fall
If there's donuts and bacon in the morning!