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.

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.

Research talk: What is the role of informatics in cancer care?

One of the greatest delights of working in an academic environment is never knowing what fascinating research may unexpectedly cross paths with you each week. Last year I held a lunar meteorite, which will probably retain the OMG COOL award for life because how often do you get to wrap your arms around a very heavy chunk of the Moon? I will never forget how I and everyone else around me was beaming with happiness approaching rapture at being able to do so.

While not quite as exciting as a lunar meteorite, being invited to research discussions by those who are passionate about their field and how their projects can help people is equally interesting to me. On Friday I was pleased to be able to attend a research conversation with Dr. Kent Unruh, a senior fellow with the Division of Biomedical and Health Informatics at the School of Medicine here at the University of Washington.

This was a reprise of his 2008 American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) symposium presentation earlier this month of Barriers to Organizing Information during Cancer Care: I don't know how people do it, abstract of

People organize their personal information to conceptualize what they know,
enhance information retrieval in the future, and cue or remember tasks in
everyday life. However, studies also suggest that organizing is difficult and
people fail to use their information effectively for emergent tasks. In the
health-care domain, patients face grave consequences if they cannot access and
use information effectively. Arguably, patients have access to more information
about their health than at any previous point in history. However, information
access is only the first step to managing health care needs. Patients must
organize it effectively to support the underlying tasks required to manage their
health proactively. Ironically, ever-increasing access to information
exacerbates the challenges patients face in using information effectively. In
this paper, we describe five barriers patients encounter when organizing their
information for use during cancer care. We describe each barrier using rich
examples from our triangulated data set, and conclude with four recommendations
to help patients organize information more effectively during active treatment.

I'm not too sure we followed the abstract presentation to the letter, but the implications I came away with for ways to help with information organization for cancer patients were

• Provide a rich intermediate structure (embed pre-organized links to other related information on insurance, necessary customization that is highly personalized)
• Leverage assistance from others (support co-management model, enable assistance from others & organization strategies for their particular situation)
• Provide a functional view of information (integrate descriptive & procedural info (who/what/where/when/who), distinguish information for active tasks, represent patient's view of cancer care system) Discovery of time-sensitive financial info in the stack added significantly to emotional stress, sort information/bills by date due instead of date services given.
• Incorporate emotional considerations (negative feedback loop of not being able to retrieve information when needed for patient involvement in own care)
• What is the role of informatics in cancer care? Clinicians and designers can explore stress reduction techniques, embed cognitive cues & known stress reduction techniques for stress relief in managing information

For the research study background that led to these implications & a great discussion, my notes are over here. I asked about Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) & Protected Health Information (PHI) concerns and he responded that he's currently a co-primary investigator (co-PI) on a portal for patients to manage cancer care information that involves portable workstations where clinicians enter & annotate information. I want to know much more about that although it wasn't really the focus of this particular talk, and will definitely keep an eye out for more of his findings in the future.

I also see social networking (such as Facebook pages) as a way to meet the need of being able to "coordinate in common information space between disparate groups" to help out in areas of emotional support, driving to appointments, bringing meals over, helping with childcare and other related activities in a patient's cancer treatment. I'm convinced Facebook is probably already being used this way and I just haven't seen it yet. Blogs are great for sharing cancer diagnosis, treatment and other information with everyone at once and receiving messages of support from loved ones in return but not so much for group coordination from what I've seen, which is sadly way too much.

Week 3 Assignment: Social Networking Tools

Caveat: I'm still a recent graduate who is not yet employed at a health sciences library, although that should be changing soon :)

I have to admit laughing when I saw our class assignments for this week involving Facebook & LinkedIn. I finally joined Facebook two months ago when I realized the networking possibilities to stay connected both with old classmates and new colleagues vs. adding more email addresses to my address book that may not work with a job change or my frequent typoes. I was invited to LinkedIn by my best friend's mom several years ago but only updated my profile there and started reaching out to others again last week.

How can social networking be used by the Medical Library Association (MLA) to connect members?
This is an excellent question because, from my perspective, the majority of MLA members are resistant to participating in social networking. The MLA groups we have on Facebook don't seem to be utilized much, if at all, although there are plenty of connections between MLA members as friends.

I believe there is a perception that social networking is one more thing to add to an already overloaded plate, with frequent mention of 'I can't manage my email, how can I handle this?' For a contrast as a new graduate, I'm currently reluctant to join many well-established listservs in our field because I don't want to add to my inbox deluge.

I see social networking (RSS feeds too) as a way to reduce email volume and be more open to communication with users where they are at and point them in directions they may not have considered otherwise (i.e. the library's online catalog). This requires staying on top of new technology and communication channels, but isn't that what we as information professionals are supposed to be doing in the first place to understand the flow of data and our users' information needs in society? Several innovative UW librarians (Lally & Dunford) sought to integrate the digital collection with Wikipedia with very positive results several years ago, and I'm curious for an update on this project in addition to learning more about UW Libraries' web 2.0 presence below.

Should your library have a Facebook or MySpace page?
As a collective UW whole (not specific to the Health Sciences Libraries), we already do. I took the same picture as the group's profile shot from a slightly lower angle in the Suzzallo Reading Room several years ago and won second place in a photo contest. I love that room! It looks like the Facebook page has been there a while but is (as of this week) starting to be updated again, which is great and I hope the trend continues with current events, news, etc. along with some outreach. There are other fragmented UW library-related Facebook pages that don't appear to be run by UW library staff but I could be mistaken.

Are there privacy concerns for individuals when using social networking sites?
Goodness, yes. I'm actually somewhat surprised that extensive privacy filtering options were not available on Facebook until a week ago! There is definitely a need for appropriate education on how to set social networking profiles and application information to be beneficial yet safe for comfort levels, and I'd love to see MLA address this as part of the curriculum from the start instead of encouraging the use of false profiles for its members to try things out. I do understand that even covering web 2.0 technologies with MLA members is a big first step which is appreciated though.

What did you like or not like about your experience with Facebook or MySpace?
I have really enjoyed learning more about my colleagues' backgrounds (regions, education, employment, groups, etc.) in addition to what makes us all human, like seeing what others are reading and who else likes the same obscure music and movies I do. In my opinion, the interactivity of Facebook and other online game applications (such as Scrabulous, both Scrabble & a private chat board for a game with 1 or multiple other players) serves to strengthen these interpersonal connections in much the same way as staff retreats, but in an asynchronous fashion that doesn't require time off work or registration fees.

I'm hazy on how connecting with users on the same level as colleagues would work (thus group Facebook pages pointing to resources vs. personal librarian pages may be best for now), but who knows what concepts of networking the future may hold. I certainly didn't envision the platforms we now take for granted when I poked around in online bulletin board systems (BBS) & internet relay chat (IRC) last decade!