(I don’t care that Ratcatcher beats me to posting cool stuff. I’m gonna’ post ‘em anyway- they’re cool and deserve multiple mentions from MedLib blogs.)
From the Ebling Library at the University of Wisconsin Madison:
I also really enjoyed this poster from Ebling1:
(Fair Warning: PDF is about 7 MBs)
Lots more on this project from Ebling here
1
In Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger writes:
Bundling songs into long-playing albums lowered the production, marketing, and distribution costs because there were fewer records to make, ship, shelve, categorize, alphabetize, and inventory. As soon as music went digital, we learned that the natural unit of music is the track.
This leaves me thinking: What’s the “natural unit” of health information? Is the article to an issue of a journal what a track is to an LP record? After all, clinicians never come to our library seeking an issue- they come in search of an article.
This leads me back to thinking about Marcus Banks’ idea of using a blog as a journal. If digital distribution eliminates the need to reduce costs by bundling mostly-unrelated articles together once a month, why bundle articles into “issues” for a digital journal? Why not release them online whenever their editorial processes are complete and they’re ready to be “published?”
I was fortunate to finally meet Marcus last week at MLA 2008. We got together along with Melissa Rethlefsen and Rachel Walden to talk about what the future of the journal might look like and agreed, I think, that we have more questions than answers.
Left to right: Marcus Banks, Rachel Walden, David Rothman. Photo by Melissa Rethlefsen and her cool new Blackberry
David Rothman
Amanda Etches-Johnson
Melissa Rethlefsen
Bart Ragon
Well, I think the MLA2008 GroupTweet I set up can be called a success. Patricia Anderson did an analysis of its use during the Plenary IV Session that makes very interesting reading.
Many who used the MLA2008 GroupTweet during the conference said that they might like something similar year-round, so I set up a GroupTweet for medical libraryfolk to follow at http://twitter.com/medlibs
After you follow the account and it reciprocates, you’ll be able to send tweets to everyone who follows it by tweeting D medlibs [message here].
I believe this’ll be the last video, but there’ll be more MLA 2008 stuff coming soon. 
MLA 2008: Parties, Dancing, Silliness from David Rothman on Vimeo.
Music is Jonathan Coulton’s Mr. Fancy Pants.
On the MLA2008 GroupTweet, someone asked:
Missing 2008 and having never attended MLA – curious, what’s biggest take home? Networking, knowledge, padding for the CV?
I answered:
Networking. Meeting smart, fun, friendly people who have similar concerns and challenges.
The following video features only a few of the really friendly, smart, fun people I met or got to hang out with at the annual meeting.
MLA 2008: People from David Rothman on Vimeo.
Music is Jonathan Coulton’s “Code Monkey”
(In my head, I now change the lyric to “OrgMonkey“)
To come in the next few days: More video and notes on MLA2008.
MLA 2008 – 5/18/2008 – Poster Session I from David Rothman on Vimeo.
Music is Jonathan Coulton’s “I Feel Fantastic”
I’ve known CJ Bryant for about 13 years, but met her for the first time in person yesterday, and that was loads of fun. We walked around Millennium Park (only a short walk from the hotel) for a while and I took a little video.
Milennium Park, 5/17/2008 from David Rothman on Vimeo.
Above: Embedded Video
Music is “ShopVac” by Jonathan Coulton (used b/c it is CC licensed).
Reading this from T. Scott’s blog made me feel a lot better:
“We feel like this every year,” I tell Lynn. “In the last couple of days before the MLA meeting we’re completely stressed out and we don’t think there’s any way that we can get everything done that needs doing. But we always end up having a great time…”
Thanks, Scott- I needed that.
Here are the three times I’ll be speaking:
I’ve been working on a tentative schedule using Google Calendar, but I suspect that that some plans may suddenly change. That’s okay- change is good.
I won’t know a whole lot of people at MLA 2008, so please say hello if you go to any of these sessions! I’ll look pretty much like this, but with a more confused expression on my face.
There are a number of medical libraryfolk using Twitter, so I thought it might be fun if we were able to conveniently send each other short messages during MLA 2008. All I had to do was set up the MLA2008 account and register it with GroupTweet.
Here’s how you can join in:
1. Go to http://twitter.com/ and sign up for a free acount
2. Go to http://twitter.com/mla2008 and click “Follow.” Shortly thereafter, you’ll receive notifcation that the MLA2008 account is also following you.
3. When you want to send a message to ALL the medical libraryfolk who follow the MLA2008 Twitter account, type: D MLA2008 [Your message here].
The MLA2008 account will take this direct message and tweet it so all who are following MLA2008 receive it.
If you want, you can set up your mobile phone/device to receive tweets (silently or on vibrate when in a session, please- be polite and considerate) and use it to organize or gather information.
Nikki Dettmar today used it to let us know where there was good, free WiFi not far from the Hyatt:
Questions? Check Twitter’s documentation or leave questions in the comments below.
Looks like I *will* be blogging in the month of May, but only from Chicago.
To my surprise, I was approved as an “official conference blogger” for MLA 2008.
All MLA 2008 conference bloggers:
Stewart Brower – Professional Notes
A’Lyn Ettien – The Creature from the Health Informatics Class
Marie Kennedy – Organization Monkey
Maureen ‘Molly’ Knapp – LSUHC New Orleans Health Sciences Center
Michelle Kraft – The Krafty Librarian
Leigh Mihlrad – Leigh’s Little Corner of the Web
Emily Molanphy (Emily has 2 blogs!) – Emily’s Journal – and – Eponymous Blog about Libraries
Bryan Nugent – The Universe of Medical Librarianship
David Rothman – davidrothman.net
Eric Schnell – The Medium is the Message
For reasons I haven’t yet been able to determine, they decided to aggregate all posts about MLA 2008 from each of these blogs on a page at a WetPaint wiki …but don’t provide an aggregated feed. So here’s a feed I slapped together in Yahoo! Pipes.
Here’s that same feed, previewed with FeedSweep:
I’ll put together a feed that pulls from more than official sources (sort of like the one I set up for CIL2008) next week and will elaborate on the MLA2008 GroupTweet I set up that’ll allow MLA attendees who use Twitter to conveniently send a tweet to all other MLA 2008 Twitter users from a laptop, cell phone, or other mobile device.
I’m bringing with me to Chicago these newfangled devices for the digital recording of sound and images (both still and moving)- so expect at least a little of that sort of stuff to appear here between 5/17 and 5/21.
Incoming Links
