davidrothman.net

Goofy, but I like it:

See also: Academic Librarian PSA and Harper Library PSA

September 7th, 2008 | Category: Fun, Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Video | Comments Off

Just stumbled across this episode of KQED’s Forum (a call-in talk show):

Tue, Aug 26, 2008 — 10:00 AM
The Future of Libraries
Traditional libraries have been caught between declining budgets and the explosive growth of online research. We talk with experts in the field about how the institutions are evolving to meet the changing needs of patrons.
Host: Michael Krasny
Guests:
• Al Escoffier, city librarian for the Burlingame Public Library
• Jane Light, director of the San Jose Library
• Jim Rettig, president of the American Library Association
• Martin Gomez, president of the Urban Libraries Council

Embedded player:

[Direct link to mp3 file]

(Yes, I remember what T. Scott said about discussing the future of libraries.)

August 29th, 2008 | Category: Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Technology | Comments Off

This NLM promotional video from 1996 “…[d]escribes current NLM services using vignettes from actual case histories of the Library’s online and other service offerings.”

Also available for download here.

April 8th, 2008 | Category: For Medical Libraryfolk, Library promotion, Technology, Video | Comments Off

Medical librarian Anne Ludvik takes a proactive approach to helping busy staff nurses solve patient care problems and get up-to-date health information at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center.

“It’s difficult for nurses to get to the physical library, so we work to bring digital resources to them,” Ludvik says.

[Read the rest]

February 26th, 2008 | Category: For Medical Libraryfolk, Library promotion, Nursing, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Technology | Comments Off

Not new, but seemingly new to YouTube:

Please join us in congratulating in Loretta Merlo, Head of Circulation, on her award-winning video display screen promotion celebrating the contributions and importance of health sciences information professionals. The promotion highlighted Mark Funk, Head of Resource Management-Collections, who is currently the President of the Medical Library Association (MLA) and other Weill Cornell librarians. A record number of libraries submitted entries for the National Medical Librarians Month (NMLM) Creative Promotions Award which were judged for creativity and innovation in library marketing. View our second place winning video.

You’ll want to view the video above at full-screen size in order to see all the detail.

February 24th, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", For Medical Libraryfolk, Library promotion, Technology, Video | Comments Off

Just heard this story from SoundPrint on my local NPR station. If you work in a library, you should go listen to it now.

Who needs libraries?
Produced by: Richard Paul
As more and more information is available on-line, as Amazon rolls out new software that allows anyone to find any passage in any book, an important question becomes: Who needs libraries anymore? Why does anyone need four walls filled with paper between covers? Surprisingly, they still do and in this program Producer Richard Paul explores why; looking at how university libraries, school libraries and public libraries have adapted to the new information world. This program airs as part of our ongoing series on education and technology, and is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education.

You can listen online (streaming RealMedia audio) for free here.

Streaming Tip: If, like me, you loathe Real Player and don’t want it installed on your computer, I recommend downloading and installing Real Alternative. I’ve been using this for years now with absolutely no complaints.

January 27th, 2008 | Category: Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Technology | Comments (1)

…Curious Expeditions has attempted to gather together the world’s most beautiful libraries for you…We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Read the whole thing and see the photos here.

[via]
Thanks to Mike for pointing this out!

September 9th, 2007 | Category: Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians | Comments (1)

This nine-minute video introduction to the University of Bristol Medical Library starts out a bit humorous, then becomes a fairly standard orientation film with oddly anachronistic music.

Is anyone else a little uncomfortable with the use of the word “idiot” in referring to patrons? I mean…if the whole video continued the joke (following Alan Moron around as he makes foolish-but-instructional mistakes) it might work. Because the joke is so brief, the video just seems to suggest (to me, anyway) that a person who confused by the library’s labeling system or who is simply unfamiliar with how the library does things must be an idiot.

What do you think?

August 13th, 2007 | Category: For Medical Libraryfolk, Library promotion, Teaching/Training, Video | Comments (7)

[soapbox]

On 7/21/2007, a Harris Poll was released which stated that in the last two years, the percentage of people who “have used the Internet to search for health-related information” has gone from 53% to 71%. This was based on a telephone poll of 1,010 adults between 7/10/07 and 7/16/07. The Harris report refers to these people as “cyberchondriacs.”

The media seems to love this story. BusinessWeek, ars technica and a ton of others have offered articles on it.

I think the study matters and merits coverage, but I object to the term “cyberchondriac.”

Managed care has resulted in physicians not being able to spend as much time educating patients at the same time patients are taking more responsibility for their healthcare decisions. The healthcare consumer who decides to do some research using the most powerful research tool the world has ever seen isn’t a hypochondriac. That consumer is taking responsibility for her healthcare and becoming informed.

Let us say that a patient is told that she had a kind of hypothyroidism. That patient goes to the bookstore and buys a book published under the name of Mayo (or Johns Hopkins or some other very reputable authority) on thyroid disorders. The patient reads the book and makes notes on questions she wants to ask her doctor when she goes in for her next office visit. This isn’t hypochondriasis. This is the sort of patient clinicians should treasure. A patient who self-educates and asks informed questions saves the time of clinicians.

Now let’s imagine that the same patient skips the book and instead searches Medline Plus for information about hypothyroidism, printing some pages out and making notes on questions she wants to ask her doctor when she goes in for her next office visit. This isn’t hypochondria either. This is the exact same behavior in a patient that clinicians should celebrate and encourage.

Hypochondriasis is a very real disorder. The hypochondriac doesn’t need an Internet connection to experience its awful symptoms.

If clinicians want to complain about patients who look up health information online with no regard to the authority of the information or the information provider, that’s fine. Those clinicians would do well to volunteer and donate to help improve outreach and information literacy programs in medical libraries. When the clinician encounters a patient who habitually looks for health information from poor sources, the clinician should refer the patient to the nearest medical library or at least point the patient towards Medline Plus.

I won’t be using the word “cyberchondriac” to describe people who seek health information online.

I won’t use it to describe hypochondriacs who look for health information online, either. It has a glib feel to it that doesn’t sit well with me when describing someone dealing with a disorder as awful as hypochondriasis.

[/soapbox]

August 3rd, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Information Literacy, Library promotion, Search, Technology | Comments Off

Women’s Health News, written by medical librarian Rachel Walden, MLIS, is now accredited by the Health On the Net Foundation.

Women’s Health News has received accreditation from the Health on the Net Foundation, which certifies that the site complies with a set of standards for trustworthy health information on the web. You’ll see the “HONCode” logo in the right sidebar, and can always click on the image to verify this site’s status; accredited sites pledge to continue following HON standards.

Congratulations, Rachel!

Perhaps this is something that many who blog on healthcare topics should think about pursuing.

June 23rd, 2007 | Category: Blogging, Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Library promotion, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Technology | Comments (1)

Above: Embedded video. If you’re reading this in an aggregator, you may need to visit the site to view.

Lots more here, but no indication yet of when the film might be completed and released.

May 4th, 2007 | Category: Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Video | Comments (2)

Reading, The Healthy Option

Wednesday 18th April 2007 , Birmingham

A one day conference for anyone interested in the links between reading activites and health. Presentations will include Get into Reading, RAYs (Reading and You), Books on Prescription, reading groups and other bibliotherapy projects and activities.

Check out some of the really interesting presentation materials.

May 4th, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Library promotion, Presentations, Professional Development | Comments Off

Below: embedded flash video

Interesting outreach program by the Macon State College Library sends librarians with laptops to the cafeteria/student life center at lunchtime to answer reference questions or help students find information they need for their coursework.

It seems like a groovy idea to me. One question: Why only 90 minutes per week?

April 22nd, 2007 | Category: Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Reference, Search, Teaching/Training, Technology, Video | Comments (2)

…with help from Frank McCourt and David Remnick:

Embedded video above

April 20th, 2007 | Category: Fun, Library promotion, Video | Comments Off

Regular readers know that I usually try to avoid posting on topics already covered by other MedLib bloggers and Michelle (at The Krafty Librarian) already posted about this, but it’s worth repeating.

Making medical fact-finding easy
Don’t trust the Internet? These local experts will help
11:07 AM CDT on Tuesday, April 17, 2007
By BRIDGET BARRY THIAS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

…”Librarians can save consumers time because they have a wealth of information resources available to them that are not available to the general public,” says Jean Shipman, president of the national Medical Library Association in Chicago.

She says medical librarians are similar to personal shoppers, offering expertise in the best information to use, based on knowing their clients’ desires, tastes and needs….

Read the rest here.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the article’s author has an MLS.

April 18th, 2007 | Category: Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians | Comments Off

Robin Siegel of Howell, the librarian at CentraState Medical Center in Freehold Township (Freehold, NJ) is profiled by the Asbury Park Press.

Not a ground-shaking item, but it sure is nice to see a reasonably good description of what a Hospital Librarian does.

Excerpt:

“I’m here to answer questions,” Siegel said, “for anybody in the hospital,” meaning for doctors, nurses and other staff members, along with patients and their families.

…

Information requests from the last few months included those for recipes for pureed food (requested by the hospital’s food services department), suicide statistics (a nurse giving a presentation), chemotherapy protocols (a pharmacist), breast cancer in men (a doctor) and whether chicken soup has a positive role in health care (a nurse).

Regarding chicken soup — yes, there are studies backing that up, Siegel said.

When she is researching for a doctor, for example, the doctor can spend time actually doctoring. Then, Siegel turns over the research to the doctor.

“I don’t come up with a recommendation; I (simply) give them the literature,” Siegel said.

As Robb Mackes wrote on MEDLIB-L, “Robin (and her patrons) did an excellent job in proving the value and the worth of a hospital library.”

April 13th, 2007 | Category: For Medical Libraryfolk, Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians | Comments Off

I enjoyed this fun, well-produced promotional video which I believe is about these libraries.

However, the title: “Police Library Girls,” seems disrespectful to me. How about “Police Librarians”? If the department’s professionals were all men, would it have been titled “Police Library Boys”? Somehow I doubt it.

What an interesting sort of special library, though. Perhaps the ideal police librarian would have a background in law librarianship?

April 7th, 2007 | Category: Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Video | Comments Off

A recent thread on the Web4Lib listserv explored various Web tools for locating libraries geographically. Here’s a review of those plus a few more.

(Click thumbnails for larger images)

National Center for Education Statistics: Library Statistics Program*

GeoLib*
Public Library Geographic Database (PLGDB) Mapping

Libraries411.com*

MapMuse: Public Libraries*

WebJunction: Online Directory of Public Library Statistics*
“Here’s a directory of public library statistics available online, organized by state.”

WebJunction: LIBWEB

Library Research Service

Libraries in Yahoo Directory

Canadian Library Gateway
Find Canadian libraries

MedLinePlus
(Find medical libraries in the U.S. and Canada)

Let me know which resources I’ve missed and I’ll add ‘em.

____________________
*via Web4Lib

March 12th, 2007 | Category: Library promotion, Reference, Search, Technology | Comments Off

From Room to Read:

Embedded video above. Depending on your aggregator, you may need to visit the site to view.

About Room to Read (Canada)
About Room to Read (US)

Room to Read partners with local communities throughout the developing world to establish schools, libraries, and other educational infrastructure. We seek to intervene early in the lives of children in the belief that education is a lifelong gift that empowers people to ultimately improve socioeconomic conditions for their families, communities, countries, and future generations. Through the opportunities that only an education can provide, we strive to break the cycle of poverty, one child at a time.

March 2nd, 2007 | Category: Library promotion, Perception of Libraries/Librarians, Video | Comments Off