Friday Foolery #4: The 1947 librarian

We've come a long way, baby. I make sure I watch this librarian vocational film once in a while to remind myself that this was cutting edge technology and information about the field at the time it was produced.

What will librarians (or whatever the job title turns into) of 2069 refer to in their era about ours? My great-grandfather's cousin is 103 and still sharp as a tack and my grandmother's cousin in her 80s runs our family's genealogy website, so perhaps I'll be a ninety-somethingbrarian and get to offer my own perspective on whatever media we're using then!

(above is an embedded video which may not show up in RSS feeds, it's from the Internet Archive and not YouTube)

About 8 minutes and 10 seconds into the film is a perky medical librarian. I share an alarming similarity with her in that my medical terminology pronunciation is currently pretty awful although I'm slowly making progress.

I particularly like this quote that is 9 minutes and 25 seconds into the film.

You will derive satisfaction from a knowledge that your work is vital and essential in forming the kind of world in which you want to live.

I can only hope so. I'm doing my part and thankful that Brewster Kahle is doing the same on a much bigger scale.

Hello, my name is Nikki and this is my blog

I've been writing Eagle Dawg Blog for a little over seven months and have always had a bit of an existential identity crisis in the middle of it. At first this was because I had no idea if I'd continue writing here since this was just a continuing education (CE) course assignment to fill in time before my pending job offer was finalized. However, I found that I not only continued writing after the CE was done, but that others were actually interested in what I had to say. This still really surprises me most days and I thank you for your time. I genuinely value it and hope to always offer you something useful except on Friday Fooleries, where there are no guarantees.

Who are you?

I'm fairly certain that if you're currently reading this you know exactly who I am in real life. There aren't many of us with brand new distance learning degrees from Texas running around in the Washington medical library community, but before now I have never officially connected the two identities. So, hi. My professional name is Nicole S. Dettmar and I work for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) which is coordinated by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). If you call me Nicole you've either known me prior to summer 1990, are a telemarketer or someone calling about Official Business, or have made a cognitive disconnect due to repeated Facebook exposure where I waltz around with my legal name. In real life, both professional and personal, the post-1990 crowd calls me Nikki. I've updated my Blogger profile to reflect me as me. It trips me out when people call me Eagle Dawg, but I do respond to that too now.

What's the big deal about going by your name?

The big deal is, to my knowledge (please correct me if I'm wrong so I don't feel like such a freak) I am the only one in NN/LM & NLM currently writing a personal public blog about my perspectives in health informatics, medical librarianship, NLM resources, etc. In my real life fledgling medical library career I am often referred to by my employer more than who I am as an individual. That is fine within the context of my job, but I want to make a few things crystal clear here about me and Eagle Dawg Blog:

• This is not an official NN/LM blog.
• I have not and never will write here on federal taxpayer time, ever. I take that very seriously.
• Some inherent bias towards NLM/NIH/HHS resources is probably unavoidable.
• If you're an American taxpayer, you've already paid for these resources so it's not like I'm trying to sell you something.
• Criticism of NLM/NIH/HHS is probably unavoidable. Don't you have days where you go bonkers from the bureaucracy?

Why are you going by your name now?

The truth? I don't know what direction scholarly publication will take in the future. I don't think it will include blogs in their current form, but what will these evolve into? I want all my work in this field to be known by and attributed to me as me and not me as a pseudonym. Yes, the recent Annoyed Librarian hiring at Library Journal spurred on this change to a certain extent, but so did receiving a recommended resource list with blogger pseudonyms instead of real names a few weeks ago.

What the heck is an Eagle Dawg anyway?

I was trying to think of what sounded creative and not cutesy with Blog for a name. Dawg quickly became obvious, the Husky is the mascot for the University of Washington & we are DAWGS not dogs. UW is where I (finally) received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Sciences and Communication in 2005 thanks to the evening degree program. I have also worked for UW for over 10 years, hopping from one department & career to another while getting married, having a chronic illness (now in remission), having a child and earning two degrees. Not many employers allow that much flexibility and I am most grateful for it. I wouldn't be where I am now without the unbelievable support of my former bosses and many coworkers.

If I was going to use Dawg as part of the blog name, then I also had to include the Eagle. That is the mascot of the University of North Texas, where I received my Master of Science in Information Science degree in 2007. The Eagle not only sounds better first, but needs to be thanks to an overwhelmingly generous fellowship UNT awarded me in distance learning health informatics. I have much to give back because I was given so much.

There you have it. Any questions?

Friday Foolery #3: Answer the phone and ask simple questions

On Wednesday we had a phone call just before 5am. I know for a fact nothing good ever comes from phone calls that early in the morning to our house, and sure enough a family member (who is fine) needed a ride home from the emergency room.

On Wednesday, 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Martin Chalfie received a phone call early in the morning too. He slept through it. When he awoke, he learned from the Internet that he was 1 of the 3 winners because he didn't answer the phone or think to check his voice mail that early.


(AP Photo/Harvard University, Livett- Weissman-Sanes-Lichtman)

During the 1960s Osamu Shimomura first identified the protein (GFP simply means green fluorescent protein) responsible for making a type of jellyfish that lives off the coast here glow in the dark. Chalfie demonstrated its value as a genetic marker in the 1990s after his graduate student Ghia Euskirchen was able to splice GFP into E. coli to create recombinant DNA, then he used it to mark certain neurons in C. elegans. Roger Tsien experimented with the amino acids (there are 20 in all proteins) in GFP to create a huge range of colors beyond green that can mark individual cells to study as shown in the picture above. (Source from nobelprize.org)

All this from a simple question: What makes those jellyfish glow?

What simple question do you have that might change the world?

Why is this here beyond the cool factor about anything that glows in the dark & the fact that you should always sleep lightly enough to hear the phone ring?

Genetics and biochemistry are dear to me because I was fortunate to be one of Mr. Stephen DeGusta's advanced biology high school students in the early 1990s. As a result of his connections in the field of genetic research our class was able to splice DNA several times, run them through agarose gel electrophoresis (I still have my final lab report with a picture of my gel), and do basic genetic engineering where we ligated a sequence for penicillin resistance into E. coli to create recombinant DNA then grew the cells on gels full of penicillin.

I've seen a few other shoutouts to Mr. DeGusta online, but it was about time for me to do my own. Some of my best hours in high school were spent cutting other classes and hiding in the lab behind his classroom (he knew full well I and plenty of others were back there) reading Scientific American and experimenting with planarians. Don't ask. You don't want to know.

Terminology turpitude: New York Times & the Pew Internet 'report' gaffe

I hadn't yet read all of the 13 articles in Decoding Your Health, a September 30th insert that was in the New York Times, and had bookmarked only one (You're Sick. Now What?) because I liked the title.

When Patients Looking for Second, Third Opinions Online popped up in the Seattle Times with the New York Times original byline yesterday morning, I figured I'd give it a read... and was promptly frustrated.

And 75 percent of online patients with a chronic problem told the researchers "their last health search affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition," according to a Pew Report released last month, "The Engaged E-Patient Population."

What?! The Engaged E-Patient Population is not a (high caliber, comprehensive & identifiable source of survey information) Pew Internet report. It is a (completely undefined term, this time a verbatim perspective column written for a company) memo.

I griped about this back on August 28th.

I understand the pressure in journalism to get articles out fast. Honestly, I do. It's precisely because I feel Pew is misleading everyone from students to researchers (and now journalists) who are taught to trust them as a data source by mixing these 'memos' in with their regular reports that I'm far more frustrated with them than the New York/Seattle Times.

Would it be too much to ask to get your miscellaneous side projects into their own clearly defined section of your website and leave your excellent report data alone to avoid a repeat of this, Pew Internet?

Friday Foolery #2: The 'S' Word

USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population. ~David Letterman

I understand the need for statistics, truly I do. They speak succinctly to certain situations where descriptive statements don't, but can be misconstrued in so many different ways that I've become rather skeptical of them. I've been buried with good, bad, and downright sobering stats lately (all my state's neighbors rank among the top ten suicide rates in the nation along with an overwhelming number of other Western rural states) for work and needed a diversion.

Along came Organization Monkey to the rescue with her fantastic stats signal!




Thanks Marie! :)

Bonus: 6 other fun statistics quotes in addition to Letterman'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!

Friday Foolery #1: Bacon vs. Financial Crisis on Google

I always like ending the workweek on a fun note, so I've decided to start sharing random, bizarre and/or entertaining tidbits here on Fridays that may or may not be useful to you as well.

Perhaps I've been living under a rock as I was completely unaware of Google Trends until now. I was alerted to its existence not by one of the many fine technology blogs out there but by Cupcakes Take the Cake who shared that 'cupcakes' are a more popular search term on Google than 'financial crisis'.

Hooray for cupcakes! I have always been a huge fan of them, and am kicking myself that I didn't know about the Crumbs and Doilies bakery when we were in London. Dr. Who cupcakes on Flickr? Pure brilliance!




However, as those who know me are well aware, my predominant food obsession is bacon. I love bacon. Apparently so do many other Google users as shown below in the popularity in the US during the past 30 days for searches on 'bacon', 'Dr. Who', 'financial crisis', 'cupcakes', and 'medical library'.


'Bacon' and 'cupcakes' are both above 'financial crisis', but the latter is starting to shoot up. 'Dr. Who' and 'medical library' appear to share a peaceful coexistence toward the bottom. I can only hope this is because everyone already knows exactly where to go for information about either when needed!

What's also kind of interesting is the Rank by tab where you select one of your search terms and it gives you data by subregions and city. As of now, bacon's results are











This may provide an environmental explanation behind my love of bacon: Sacramento (10) was my hometown of 18 years, I lived around San Francisco (9) for 6, and the rest of my life thus far in Seattle (5).

I'm going to keep tabs on this search and am not above some covert action if need be to retain bacon and cupcakes' authority over the financial crisis.