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!

Blog With Integrity - Why I Write

mystical moose by Steve took it

I approach blogging the same way as when I was the News Director at my college station KSUN in the 1990s. I and my news team was tasked with recording carts for newsbreaks that the DJs would play at set times during their shows. I also add a heavy dose of investigative work thanks to my soft spot for healthcare journalism. My past is very much my present.

It comes down to telling it like it is in truth; the good, the bad, the Elsevier Australasian. I inject my attitude in frequently because this is my blog but I do try to be fair. The more ridiculous something is, the closer I will stick to neutral language to let the story speak (scream?) for itself. I can not allow this space to speak for others except myself, with the exception of guest bloggers who tell their own truth as well.

This is why I'm thrilled to learn about, sign up for and promote Blog With Integrity. I subscribe to this pledge:

By displaying the Blog with Integrity badge or signing the pledge, I assert that the trust of my readers and the blogging community is important to me.

I treat others respectfully, attacking ideas and not people. I also welcome respectful disagreement with my own ideas.

I believe in intellectual property rights, providing links, citing sources, and crediting inspiration where appropriate.

I disclose my material relationships, policies and business practices. My readers will know the difference between editorial, advertorial, and advertising, should I choose to have it. If I do sponsored or paid posts, they are clearly marked.

When collaborating with marketers and PR professionals, I handle myself professionally and abide by basic journalistic standards.

I always present my honest opinions to the best of my ability.

I own my words. Even if I occasionally have to eat them.

This is why critiquing Clinical Reader was important to me. Even if I wasn't threatened for it and covered en masse as a result, even if no one else read a word I wrote, I saw what was wrong and had to say something.

I always will even if everyone else thinks otherwise & I'm in it up to my neck.

Thanks to LibrarianInBlack for the hat tip!

Evaluation 2.0: Clinical Reader

It's been two weeks since I posted my original critique of Clinical Reader.

Website Update

The good news is the 5-star 'according to' the National Library of Medicine and other organizations graphic and the 3 copyrighted images that were being used without permission are gone.

The so-so news is there is still no identification or specific contact information on the website about who is running Clinical Reader or on their Editorial Board. Does 'A junior doctor and a small group of forward thinking young tech programmers' make for an 'authoritative source' for health news and information? (About/Beginnings)

The bad news is in the multimedia section. I've created a one minute screencast demonstrating why



Below is SpringerImages Terms of Use policy section 5b, bold emphasis mine:

You shall not use the Content for commercial purposes, i.e., for the purposes of monetary reward by means of the sale, resale, loan, transfer, hire or other similar form of exploitation of the Content, direct or indirect, including the placement or upload of the Licensed Content on a commercial entity’s internet website.

The definition of a commercial or legal entity is a person or organization that can legally enter a contract, and therefore may be sued for failure to comply with the terms of the contract. (source)

Clinical Reader is a commercial entity. They are soliciting advertising contracts per their Advertising. The wording of Clinical Reader's Privacy Policy section 5 also indicates interest in working with marketing and pharmaceutical companies with We may share your personal information with companies performing services on our behalf (such as direct marketing agents or pharmaceutical companies) who will only use the information to provide that service. The Privacy Policy is about midway down through Clinical Reader's Terms of Use.

Hotlinking, or directly linking to an image and using an outside server's bandwidth to display it on your website, is not considered a good website practice with the exception of banner advertisements. The source of one of the images displayed on Clinical Reader is http://img.springerimages.com/Images/Springer/PUB=Springer-Verlag-Berlin-Heidelberg/JOU=00167/VOL=2009.17/ISU=8/ART=2009_798/MediaObjects/THUMB_167_2009_798_Fig3_HTML.jpg

This is a new development as the screencast of the Clinical Reader multimedia page from the Google cache dated July 24, 2009 22:54:29 GMT shows nothing from SpringerImages.

Social Media Update

Here is a sampling of blog coverage about this aspect of Clinical Reader, the variety of viewpoints from different audiences is quite interesting.

• Completely noir-bizarre (end of Act 5) - an honor and pleasure to be included in Vol 5 No 44 of Grand Rounds, hosted at Doc Gurley
  
  
• Sturm und drang - Roy Tennant of Library Journal's perspective largely drawn from both the
  
  
• 'toxic and dangerous' category - Steve Lawson, the first to blog what happened next, and
  
  
• Stranger and stranger - Disruptive Library Technology Jester's second (first here) narrative of the saga
  
  
• Don't piss off librarians - understatement of the month by Jill Hurst-Wahl of eNetworking101, also part 2
  
  
• Best bad marketing ever - by Iris of Pegasus Librarian (also part 2, notice theme?) and
  
  
• 'Legal ramifications,' my Aunt Fanny - David Rothman always tells it like it is

A comment from David Lee King includes

The web tends to magnify personalities. If you’re a good person, it will show. If you run a company that links to un(typo?)copyrighted stuff & posts fake recommendations, then posts defensive tweets about it … well, that shows too.

Indeed.

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

Friday Foolery #43: Saving the Squirrel

Poor little guy. We only eat Tillamook yogurt in our house with straight, squirrel-safe sides instead of the deadly Yoplait taper.

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.