davidrothman.net

In this video, 4th-year medical student Ryan MacDonald demonstrates how he uses Evernote as his “medical peripheral brain.”

So cool.

March 2nd, 2009 | Category: E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Presentations, Technology, Video, Web Applications | Comments (5)

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

May 29th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, MLA2008, Technology | Comments (3)

Dean Giustini likes Marcus’ idea about replacing LIS journals with blogs (see yesterday’s post), but also has concerns:

…my only reservation is when research methods are used such as randomization and the articles would need to go through peer-review.

T. Scott (former editor of the JMLA and one of my favorite contrarians) explains some of his reservations about the idea:

I’m not one who is terribly impressed by the “wisdom of crowds” (a concept that seems to be especially dubious during the US election season). I’ve rarely seen anything approaching substantive discussion and analysis take place in a comment thread, and the longer the thread, the more worthless it typically is. Rather than providing vibrant post-publication review, I’m afraid that posting unedited articles for comment would result in much good work being buried and ignored.

[...snip...]

Marcus is pushing the right questions, and everyone involved in scholarly publishing, at whatever level, should be thinking creatively about how to make the communication and discussion of projects and ideas more effective.

I’ve noticed my neck often aches after reading T. Scott’s blog. After some investigation, I’ve finally figured out that this is because I can’t seem to stop nodding my head while I read him.

I especially like this last bit of his post:

But it isn’t a matter of journals vs blogs. The most effective modes of communication that we develop over the next decade will adopt features that we associate with each, but will be fundamentally different from either.

I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think that blogs or wikis are going to revolutionize medicine, education, or publishing- but some applications of their descendent technologies might.

Since LIS News and LibraryStuff both posted about it, I’m betting there’ll be more interesting opinions to enjoy soon.

February 12th, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Technology | Comments (3)

Big day for me. My Electronic Resources Review of BioWizard was published in the JMLA.

BioWizard
David L. Rothman
J Med Libr Assoc. 2008 January; 96(1): 74. doi: 10.3163/1536-5050.96.1.74.
| Full Text | PDF–988K

Of course, I just realized that BioWizard has significantly changed its interface since I wrote the review. Dangit.

January 25th, 2008 | Category: 3rd Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tools, E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Web Geekery in Recent Literature | Comments (3)

I just discovered that the Journal of Medical Internet Research has a page where they feature snippets of (and links to) recent posts from what they call “eHealth Blogs,” including davidrothman.net.

January 19th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments Off

I knew that the The JAMA Report, “a weekly video and audio medical news service from the Journal of the American Medical Association,” was available from its home page at thejamareport.org, but The MARquee points out that JAMA also posts episodes to Blip.tv at thejamareport.blip.tv. Even better, you can subscribe to these videos as an RSS feed.

If you want, you can even embed Blip.tv’s player in your Web site and let your library’s patrons watch these videos from the comfort of your library’s own intranet presence. Easy instructions on how to do this are here.

Edit: Sorry! I failed at first to link the post at The MARquee! This has been remedied above.

November 26th, 2007 | Category: E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, RSS/Feeds, Technology, Video | Comments Off

BioMed Central announced on Friday that they’ve launched a YouTube Channel.

In addition to our YouTube channel, we are working with SciVee to ensure the visibility and linking of PubCasts featuring BioMed Central articles. For example, SciVee currently features a pubcast by Apostol Gramada in which he describes the research he published in BMC Bioinformatics.

Berci seems pretty excited about the prospect of more publishers doing the same, but I find myself wondering how much money and time publishers (or writers/editors) are going to invest in producing video content to compliment or promote their written works.

Should be interesting to keep an eye on, regardless.

Fun Little Hack:
If you’d like to subscribe to new videos that are posted in this channel without having to log into YouTube, you can subscribe to this RSS feed.

November 26th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, RSS/Feeds, Technology, Video | Comments (3)

I’m not ashamed to admit that I get a kick out of seeing my name or work in published books or journals.

But the most recent issue of the Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (2007, Vol 3, Issue 4) caught me by surprise. Oliver Obst’s “Web 2.0″ column, Notes from the Blogosphere (Page 60-61) included the following:

David Rothman is one of the most indefatigable bloggers around, and as a result his blog: davidrothman.net – Exploring Medical Librarianship and Web Geekery is the only one which is ranked in the top 10 healthcare blogs worldwide.(12) Congratulations! However, David recently suffered a spontaneous pneumothorax(13) and had to slow down blogging for some time. Now – back again at his job – he felt seriously pooped.(14) Nevertheless, his personal experience taught us much about thoracic surgery and NEJM videos on chest-tube insertion(15) as well as the benefits of the generous use of anaesthesia and conscious sedation.

Oliver is very kind and I’m grateful for the chuckle.

…Now I just need to find a way to work the word “indefatigable” into my résumé…

November 8th, 2007 | Category: Blogging, E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Personal, Technology | Comments (2)

Dean Giustini just keeps making his profession look good from the outside, doesn’t he?

University Affairs (”Canada’s magazine on higher education”) features an article on The New Librarians in which Dean is mentioned and quoted.

University of British Columbia’s libraries have also seen dramatic changes. When biomedical branch librarian Dean Giustini joined the UBC library staff 10 years ago, the biomedical library offered just three electronic journals. It now offers 40,000. Mr. Giustini, named Canadian Hospital Librarian of the Year for 2007, is a well-read and popular blogger. He maintains the Google Scholar Blog (with the stated purpose “to observe, document and comment on the evolution of academic-scholarly searching”) and is the blogger for Open Medicine, a peer-reviewed, open-access online journal that aims to provide high-quality health information. In 2005, he kicked off a lengthy debate among experts with a British Medical Journal editorial entitled “How Google is changing medicine.”

Mr. Giustini doesn’t believe that the librarian’s role is diminished by today’s ready availability of information. “I think our role will be helping people to teach each other how to find information, but also how to critically evaluate information,” he says. “People need to see us as knowledgeable about knowledge, in all its forms.”

…and later in the article:

Tim Mark, executive director of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, says that some older, more traditional academic librarians have found the new technology a bit daunting, and the new approach to library space, challenging. This has sometimes led to generational tensions, ones which Dean Giustini at UBC says he has felt first-hand.

“Some people just don’t get it,” says Mr. Giustini bluntly. “But I’ve got tenure, and I’m going to continue to push the envelope as much as I can. … Librarians need to be seen to be part of this revolution. And if you don’t want to stay in the profession because of it, there are lots of young, fresh, smart librarians who will take your place.”

Let’s just repeat that last part in bold:

“…Librarians need to be seen to be part of this revolution. And if you don’t want to stay in the profession because of it, there are lots of young, fresh, smart librarians who will take your place.”

November 7th, 2007 | Category: Blogging, E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Technology | Comments (3)

Who are the doctor bloggers and what do they want?
Coombes BMJ.2007; 335: 644-645

[Abstract] [Full Text]

Medical blogs are sometimes seen as just rants about the state of health care, but they have also been credited with spreading public understanding of science and rooting out modern day quacks. Rebecca Coombes checks out the medical blogosphere

Lacking full-text access to this journal, I haven’t read the article. I would welcome the chance to read it if someone would like to send it my way.

Thanks!

September 28th, 2007 | Category: Blogging, E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments Off

Having already had some success with it’s “Clinical Decisions” experiment (see this post and this post), NEJM has launched another interactive feature called “Perspective Forum.”

The feature establishes a topic of discussion and provides a form in which readers can post their comments.

My initial reaction is a resounding “Meh.” Wouldn’t it be preferable to have a threaded record of the discussion so that readers can interact with each other?

September 27th, 2007 | Category: E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments (2)

New York Times article:

“…Reed Elsevier, which publishes more than 400 medical and scientific journals, is trying an experiment that stands this model on its head. Over the weekend it introduced a Web portal, www.OncologySTAT.com, that gives doctors free access to the latest articles from 100 of its own pricey medical journals and that plans to sell advertisements against the content.

The new site asks oncologists to register their personal information. In exchange, it gives them immediate access to the latest cancer-related articles from Elsevier journals like The Lancet and Surgical Oncology. Prices for journals can run from hundreds to thousands of dollars a year.”

Read the rest here.

Visit OncologySTAT.com

September 10th, 2007 | Category: E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology, Vendors | Comments (6)

Nicole Engard points out that SAGE Journals Online is offering free trial access to the following journals through the end of September 2007:

• IFLA Journal
• Journal of Librarianship and Information Science
• Journal of Information Science
• Business Information Review
• Information Development
• Journal Of Health Informatics

You can register here.

August 2nd, 2007 | Category: E-Journals, Technology | Comments Off

The New England Journal of Medicine’s new social feature, Clinical Decisions, has closed its call for feedback and posted the results.

You can also view the results by country with this interactive map.

White coat Notes (a Boston Globe blog) notes that Journal voters stray from the evidence.

Readers were given three choices to vote on. When the 6,085 votes from 113 countries were counted, two of the three choices were almost a tie, with only eight votes separating them. But the winner, with 37.5 percent of the votes, was not the choice consistent with what the two studies concluded…

June 25th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", E-Journals, EBM, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments Off

Where Papers, iPapers, Sente and BibDesk are personal PDF managers, Librarian is a server-side application to allow groups of people to collectively build an annotate a shared PDF library that is managed from inside their Web browsers.

Librarian was designed to enable a small trusted group of researchers to create an annotated virtual library of articles in portable document format (PDF). All users may participate in the creation of the virtual library, and all users may then browse and search articles by words or phrases, much like at journal sites. The difference is that you have instant access to full text of the article, which you identified in seconds.

Metadata about each article is imported from PubMed and users can annotate articles. To get a better idea of how it works, check out the demo.

If this might be useful to you, check out the requirements, note the fact that it is free, open-source software (GPL) and give it a try.

If you try it, please be sure to let me know what you think- I may install this myself, if only because it looks neat and I’d love to start a little article-sharing database with a few friends.

June 18th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Mashups, Technology | Comments (3)

From The Boston Globe:

For the first time, physicians will be asked to weigh in on what they would do for a patient, based on research papers published in the current issue and what they read about a fictitious case. Their choices will be tallied online for four weeks and their comments posted in an experiment to better connect with readers, editor-in-chief Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen (left) said in an interview.

….

First up in the Journal is the case of a 30-year-old woman with mild persistent asthma who wonders if she should change her medications. The vignette is followed by three choices and an essay to support each option. Readers can make their picks and explain why online.

Okay, that sounds like a good idea…subscribers feel engaged and let the NEJM (and their colleagues) know what they think. It results in a feature that is generated by user feedback. That’s fine, I guess- but is it really any different from when CNN or Fox News set a question and invite viewers to call in with their opinions?

This part in particular threw me:

“Evidence-based medicine is somewhat of an illusory thing,” he said. “Very few patients fit the inclusion criteria for a clinical trial. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle when the pieces don’t quite fit.”

Poll results from clinicians may add another piece of information about how clinical decisions are made.

“We hope to learn from them as well as having them learn from us,” Drazen said.

Does this confuse anyone else? How would a non-scientific poll of self-selected participants aid EBP efforts?

It is entirely possible (read: likely) that I’m just missing something here, so please do feel free to leave a comment and school me.

[via Kevin, M.D.]

May 17th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments (7)

You might remember this post about an OS X application for managing PDFs using metadata from PubMed- the application is called iPapers.

Ars Technica recently reviewed an application for OS X with some awfully similar features called Papers

Click image for larger version

From the Papers site:

Introducing Papers…
Do you have dozens of PDF files from your favorite scientific articles scattered on your harddrive? Do you also try to desperately organize them by renaming and archiving them in folders? But like the piles of printed articles on your desk, you can’t keep up with all the new papers you download, and despite all your efforts it has become impossible to find that one article.

Finally that all belongs to the past. We’ve been there, trust us, we know. That’s why we wrote Papers, our latest application exclusively for the Mac. Papers will revolutionize the way you deal with scientific papers. Search for papers using PubMed, directly retrieve and archive PDFs, and read and study them all from within Papers, your personal library of Science.

From the Ars Technica article:

The comments on the Ars review include mention of BibDesk and Sente as potential alternatives. I love Sente’s marketing: “It’s like iTunes for academic literature.”

March 21st, 2007 | Category: E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments (5)

On Feb 12th, Doris Samojluk posted to MEDLIB-L an updated checklist for finding free full-text articles online. I tucked it away for later reference, but there was one resource I didn’t see mentioned that I thought should have been: PubMed Gold

.

Created by MLIS student Shawn Thomas, PubMed Gold is an alternative search interface for PubMed that simultaneously uses Google to search for the full text. I wouldn’t use this to replace the checklist, but I’d certainly add it.

Other posts about third-party PubMed tools:

• PubMed Reader
• For MedLibs who use Macs: iPapers
• PubMed2Connotea / PubMed2CiteULike
• More notes on BioWizard (Digg for Medical Literature, Part 3.5)
• More Alternate PubMed interfaces via Journalology
• BioWizard Enhancements: ‘Digg for Medical Literature’ Part III (Edited)
• Authoratory
• Some Alternative Interfaces and Mashups for MedLibs
• LitMiner
• PubFocus
• BioWizard: The start of ‘Digg for Medical Literature’?
• Article on HubMed

March 1st, 2007 | Category: 3rd Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tools, E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Mashups, Search, Technology | Comments (3)

This presentation by John Battelle* is from December of 2005, but is still absolutely worth reading through. This slide, for instance.

_______________
* – If you’re not familiar with John Battelle, see his blog, his book and his company, Federated Media.

February 24th, 2007 | Category: E-Journals, Presentations, Technology | Comments Off