davidrothman.net

davidrothman.net

Exploring Medical Librarianship and Web Geekery

 
 
 
 

Archive for Blogging

NCBI ROFL

Martha Hardy (friend, medical librarian, incredibly cool person) hipped me to NCBI ROFL, a wonderful blog that highlights the best chuckles from PubMed citations.

Edit: D’oh! Nikki posted about this yesterday and Berci before that!

I have become a truly lame blogger.

June 27th, 2009 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Fun | Comments (2)

IntenseDebate Test (Updated)

[Update] One’s FriendFeed feed needs to be public in order for IntenseDebate to pick up the comments and bring them onto the blog. IntenseDebate isn’t perfect, but I love the threaded comments, I like quickly moderating comments via email, and I like the sidebar widget for comments (if you’re reading this via RSS, visit the blog and check out the left sidebar). I’ll keep it for now. Thanks to those who helped me test it![/Update]

____________

I’ve installed a plugin/service called IntenseDebate on this blog. Among the things it is supposed to do is pick up comments people make on my posts in FriendFeed and import them as comments. I’m curious to see if it will find those comments even if my FriendFeed is set to private. If you’re seeing this post through FriendFeed, please leave a comment in FriendFeed (not a ‘like’) so that can be tested?

Thanks!

February 16th, 2009 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, Technology | Comments (1)

HHS/FDA/CDC Social Media Tools for Consumers and Partners

New to me- and a good idea to put all of this on one page.

http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/

I didn’t know the CDC was on MySpace or that the FDA had a recall Twitter feed.

I decided I should definitely follow the CDC’s Twitter feed for Health Professionals, which is for “…Health Professionals interested in staying up-to-date with CDC’s interactive media activities…”

They’ve also got a widget to help consumers search for products impacted by the Peanut-Containing Product Recall (embedded below).

FDA Salmonella Typhimurium Outbreak 2009. Flash Player 9 is required.

Includes:

  • Blogs
  • eMail Subscriptions
  • Health-e-Cards
  • Mobile Information
  • Online Video
  • Phone/Email
  • Podcasts
  • RSS Feeds
  • Social Networks
  • Badges for Social Networks
  • Twitter
  • Virtual Worlds
  • Web Sites
  • Widgets

Go check it out.

Hat tip: Maura Sostack

February 5th, 2009 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, Consumer Health Info, For Medical Libraryfolk, Online Social Networks, Podcasting, RSS/Feeds, Technology | Comments (6)

Vote for a medical librarian!

For the second year in a row, a MedLib blog has been nominated for the MedGadget Medical Weblog awards.

Please note that Laika has been nominated for Best New Weblog and consider dropping by to vote for her?

What’s not to like about a smart, Dutch medical librarian’s blog?

Please- go vote now.

January 16th, 2009 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs | Comments (1)

More About the Book

So the book is getting some attention!

Internet Cool Tools for Physicians is in Google Book Search

Stephen Francoeur made this little video:

The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the MLA mentioned it on their blog.

The MLA’s Taskforce on Social Networking Software posted about it, calling it “…an accessible, illustrated and contemporary guide to online tools in medicine.”

Laika, whose blog has quickly become one of my favorite MedLib blogs, mentioned it, as did Creaky.

I’m watching WorldCat.org with interest to see which libraries are getting it (though Duke’s copy doesn’t show up yet).

Dr. Shock (MD, PhD) gave it a very nice review.

I’m lucky to count as friends people like Meredith Farkas and Michael Stephens, both of whom thought the book worthy of mention on their very popular blogs.

Gosh- Brandi blogged about it way back in August- well before it as released!

I’m pleased to see mention of it in languages other than English.

The President and CEO of Community General Hospital blogged about it.

It has gotten some buzz on Twitter.

We’re anxious to hear any feedback you have about the book- please let us know what you think….and what you think needs to be added or changed for the second edition! :)

January 15th, 2009 | Category: "Social Software", 3rd Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tools, Blogging, CSEs, Online Social Networks, Podcasting, RSS/Feeds, Search, Shameless Self-Promotion, Technology, Web Applications | Comments (7)

The Book!

Got my hands on my copies of the book today! How exciting!

Yay!

You can buy a copy from:
Springer Publishing

or here:

I’m looking forward to eventually seeing it in WorldCat. :)

Congratulations to Melissa Rethlefsen (who wrote a heck of a lot more than I did)! You should really go email Melissa now and tell her how much she rocks.

December 8th, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", 3rd Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tools, Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, How to, Online Social Networks, RSS/Feeds, Search, Shameless Self-Promotion, Technology, Web Applications, Wikis, del.icio.us | Comments (10)

NYLA’s ‘Meet the Bloggers’ Panel (slides)

Jill Hurst-Wahl’s slides are available here.

November 7th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, Presentations, Shameless Self-Promotion, Technology | Comments (1)

UNYOC (CE slides) and NYLA Tomorrow

My apologies to the awfully nice folks who attended the CE course I taught at UNYOC a couple of weeks ago! I’ve taken far too long to get these slides posted:

Also: I’ll be on a panel at NYLA tomorrow (Friday, 11/6/2008) afternoon at 4:00 PM- please say hello if you’re going to be there! As usual at these sorts of things, I’ll know almost nobody. But hey- I might get to meet Polly Farrington!

November 6th, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", 3rd Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tools, Blogging, Mashups, Online Social Networks, Podcasting, Presentations, Professional Development, RSS/Feeds, Shameless Self-Promotion, Teaching/Training, Technology, Web Applications, Wikis | Comments (3)

The Health Blogosphere: What It Means for Policy Debates and Journalism

Interesting item via Patricia Anderson: A Kaiser Family Foundation panel on the health blogosphere.

Interesting to note that the only bloggers on the panel are from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the Wall Street Journal. Where are the physician bloggers, patient bloggers, nursing bloggers, etc.?

August 27th, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments (2)

WordPress Fun

Oy. Finally performed a long-overdue upgrade of WordPress, so this blog is finally running the latest version. I’m slowly working on a redesign- so if you’re reading this post via RSS, stop by the site and let me know what you think so far.

One thing I’m pleased about is that I’ve finally set up this blog’s mobile version. Those visiting via mobile device (Hi Melissa Rethlefsen and J. Dale Prince!) will see a version more suitable for a small screen.

In case your mobile browser isn’t recognized and automatically shown the mobile version, I’ve put a link at the top left of the header that’ll turn it on:

Please let me know what you think. :)

August 24th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, Technology | Comments (7)

MedLib Blog Badge at I’m Feeling Lucky

I’m Feeling Lucky is written by Brandi Tuttle, an Information and Education Services Librarian at the Duke University Medical Center Library. Brandi writes:

I’m Feeling Lucky grew out of a discussion with my husband (who’s also a librarian). We were talking about the services and databases offered by libraries. My husband laughingly commented on the usefulness of Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. That option has value!! Sometimes people just don’t want to go through the work of looking through a library’s list of helpful links (even if all the links rock). One pretty good link will suffice.

I was fortunate to meet Brandi at MLA 2008 and enjoyed her unique style of saying outrageous (and frequently hilarious) things in a sweet, cheerful voice.

Why is David always on about this badgey stuff? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

Previously, I’ve noted the following blogs that display the MedLib Blog badge in their sidebars:

These blogs are:

  1. about medical / health / health sciences / biomedical librarianship;
  2. written by (a) medical librarian(s) or medical library paraprofessional(s);
  3. maintained by a medical library; or
  4. maintained by professional association of medical librarians and/or medical library paraprofessionals.

Hey! My blog has the MedLib Blog badge and you haven’t featured it here!

Sorry! I do try for omniscience, but frequently fall short of this goal. If I’ve missed the badge on your blog or if you’ve just added it, please let me know so I can link to it from here.

Why would I want to add the badge to my blog?

The badge links back to the masterlist of MedLib blogs to indicate the blog’s membership in the growing community (and sense of community) of MedLib blogs(/bloggers). (This should serve also as a reminder to add your blog to this masterlist, if appropriate.)

To add this badge to your own blog, just copy and paste this code:


<a href="http://liswiki.org/wiki/Medlib_Blogs">
<img src="http://tinyurl.com/y32hh8/"></a>

Not sure how to do this with your particular blogging software? Email me at david[DOT]rothman[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll figure it out together. :)

August 20th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Technology | Comments (1)

How not to pitch David on a post topic

I get email all the time from people who would like me to post about a site. I know that these get sent to a lot of bloggers in health care because I frequently see these sites mentioned on other blogs with 24 hours of receiving the email. I ignore 90% of these either because I think they won’t be of interest to those who read this blog or because I think they’re just lousy sites. I thought it might be fun to look at a recent example of an email I received and how I made the decision to not post about the site (except to write this post).

I’ve removed the sender’s email address (as a courtesy to protect him from spambots) and the hyperlink (to refrain from lending the site any Google Juice).

from: Dixon, Bill < [xxxxxxx]@cohnwolfe.com>
to: David Rothman
date: Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:53 AM
subject: A new interactive healthcare site

Hi David,

I’m writing on behalf of Cephalon, the manufacturer of PROVIGIL.

Just one sentence in and I know this doesn’t look good. It is never a good sign when I get an email from a PR firm instead of from a site’s owner/developer. It is also immediately clear that this email is going to be about a site sponsored by a phamaceutical company that exists solely for the purpose of promoting their drug. Still, I’ll happily promote a commercial site that is really useful (MerckMedicus is a good example of that), so I keep reading to see if this might fall into that category.

I thought you might be interested in letting readers of your blog know about www.StillSleepy.com [hyperlink removed- David] – a site recently launched for people who continue to experience excessive sleepiness even after being treated for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

Note: The hyperlink to the site he’s plugging was bungled and directed me to his company’s OWA login. Clumsy.

The sites’ two key components are:

Still Sleepy Tracker – an interactive tool that allows patients to track their sleepiness and print the results to share with their health care provider; this tool can be downloaded to a personal homepage such as iGoogle or Netvibes for users to continually track their sleepiness.

I’m not an expert in sleep medicine, but this seems nowhere near as complete as the diary formats (1 and 2) created by the National Sleep Foundation or this one from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. A site that allowed the patient to keep a useful diary to share with a doctor (like SugarStats or FertilityFriend do) might be cool- but this is nowhere near as detailed or useful as those sites.

Video diaries – a patient (who is also a physician) shares his experiences living with the disorder and what it’s like to be still sleepy even after treating his OSA.

A new video diary episode has just been posted and new diary entries will continue to be posted over the next several months, so the site will continue to be updated with fresh content.

Let me get this straight: I can come to your site and watch someone else (an internist who does not specialize in sleep medicine) talk on video about how sleepy he has been and how unpleasant it is to have a sleep disorder…and watch him plug Provigil? (Okay, I admit I didn’t even bother watching past the first 30 seconds of the first video, but what a dreadfully dull concept!)

Given your blog’s coverage of healthcare 2.0 sites, I think www.StillSleepy.com would be a great resource for your readers. Feel free to post a link to the site on your blog. I will follow up with you to provide more insight, in the mean time, please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

I dunno’. I think (hope) most of this blog’s readers would see through pharma marketing schtick and would notice pretty quickly that it isn’t at all useful.

August 14th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments (6)

MedLib Blog Badge at MGAS nieuws

Jens De Groot’s MGAS nieuws is normally in Flemmish/Dutch, but an English-language version (which seems NOT to be machine-translated) is also available.

MGAS News is the weblog of the Campus Library Biomedical Sciences (MGAS) of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). Here we offer information from and about our library (services) and biomedical information of interest for researchers, physicians and students.

Why is David always on about this badgey stuff? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

Previously, I’ve noted the following blogs that display the MedLib Blog badge in their sidebars:

These blogs are:

  1. about medical / health / health sciences / biomedical librarianship;
  2. written by (a) medical librarian(s) or medical library paraprofessional(s);
  3. maintained by a medical library; or
  4. maintained by professional association of medical librarians and/or medical library paraprofessionals.

Hey! My blog has the MedLib Blog badge and you haven’t featured it here!

Sorry! I do try for omniscience, but frequently fall short of this goal. If I’ve missed the badge on your blog or if you’ve just added it, please let me know so I can link to it from here.

Why would I want to add the badge to my blog?

The badge links back to the masterlist of MedLib blogs to indicate the blog’s membership in the growing community (and sense of community) of MedLib blogs(/bloggers). (This should serve also as a reminder to add your blog to this masterlist, if appropriate.)

To add this badge to your own blog, just copy and paste this code:


<a href="http://liswiki.org/wiki/Medlib_Blogs">
<img src="http://tinyurl.com/y32hh8/"></a>

Not sure how to do this with your particular blogging software? Email me at david[DOT]rothman[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll figure it out together. :)

August 8th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Technology | Comments (1)

MedLib Blog Badge at Laika’s MedLibLog

This blog was started as part of the online course SPOETNIK on NEW (web 2.0) internet communication methods for librarians. I will not only blog the course exercises but will also write about Medical Information, Medical Libraries, PubMed, the Cochrane Collaboration, Evidence Based Medicine etc.. Sometimes in English.

http://laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com

Why is David always on about this badgey stuff? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

Previously, I’ve noted the following blogs that display the MedLib Blog badge in their sidebars:

These blogs are:

  1. about medical / health / health sciences / biomedical librarianship;
  2. written by (a) medical librarian(s) or medical library paraprofessional(s);
  3. maintained by a medical library; or
  4. maintained by professional association of medical librarians and/or medical library paraprofessionals.

Hey! My blog has the MedLib Blog badge and you haven’t featured it here!

Sorry! I do try for omniscience, but frequently fall short of this goal. If I’ve missed the badge on your blog or if you’ve just added it, please let me know so I can link to it from here.

Why would I want to add the badge to my blog?

The badge links back to the masterlist of MedLib blogs to indicate the blog’s membership in the growing community (and sense of community) of MedLib blogs(/bloggers). (This should serve also as a reminder to add your blog to this masterlist, if appropriate.)

To add this badge to your own blog, just copy and paste this code:




Not sure how to do this with your particular blogging software? Email me and we’ll figure it out together.

July 23rd, 2008 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Technology | Comments Off

This Blog is (over) Two Years Old

Aw. Because Simon arrived a bit early, I failed to note this blog’s second blogaversary earlier this month.

I’ll eventually get back to regular posting (perhaps when Simon is sleeping longer hours?), but I wanted briefly to thank y’all for reading. It wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without you.

Some facty-figurish things:

There are currently 1,024 posts (which makes an average of more than 9 posts/week for the last two years) and 2,115 comments.

Akismet has caught 148,927 spam comments. Wow. Helps me love Akismet.

Feed Subscribers (via FeedBurner):

July 20th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, Personal | Comments (2)

Medical Librarians in Computers, Informatics, Nursing

Bill Perry’s Notes from the Net Nomad column in the May/June issue of Computers, Informatics, Nursing (PubMed) is pretty much about MedLib blogs. :)

Excerpts:

I think nurses are missing something if they haven’t investigated blogs written by medical librarians. Experts in finding and assessing information, medical librarians are an resource underutilized by many nurses.

(…snip…)

Visit a medical librarian’s blog, communicate electronically, or visit one in person. You’ll find colleagues who want to provide you with the right information at the right time to care for patients.

How much do medical libraryfolk love Bill Perry right now?

June 19th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Technology | Comments Off

The UK Biblioblogosphere

The UK Biblioblogosphere is a blog by Keir Hopwood. From Keir’s announcement:

I wanted to announce my new blog, which details my MSc ILM research project on UK academic (i.e. university) library blogs:

http://ukbiblioblogosphere.blogspot.com/

On this blog I will

a) detail the progress and any interesting milestones in the research andwriting process itself

b) keep a list of relevant online resources, including openly available scholarly literature and related blogs

c) keep an updated “directory” of UK academic library blogs at http://del.icio.us/ukbiblioblogosphere

I warmly invite all readers of this list to follow my progress, leave comments and especially alert me to any new or closing blogs so that I can keep the list up to date.

I hope it contributes to research and practice in this field.

Keir, I expect to plunder your del.icio.us account for blogs not yet added to LibWorm- good luck with your project and thanks for making your collection available to others!

June 18th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, LibWorm, Technology | Comments (3)

MedLib Blog Badge at Health, Science & Libraries

For a while there, Jane Blumenthal had me worried that she was going to quit blogging.

Jane is the Director of the Health Sciences Libraries at University of Michigan and I’m really glad she changed her mind- I’d like to see more directors following her lead and blogging.

Why is David always on about this badgey stuff? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

Previously, I’ve noted the following blogs that display the MedLib Blog badge in their sidebars:

These blogs are:

  1. about medical / health / health sciences / biomedical librarianship;
  2. written by (a) medical librarian(s) or medical library paraprofessional(s);
  3. maintained by a medical library; or
  4. maintained by professional association of medical librarians and/or medical library paraprofessionals.

Hey! My blog has the MedLib Blog badge and you haven’t featured it here!

Sorry! I do try for omniscience, but frequently fall short of this goal. If I’ve missed the badge on your blog or if you’ve just added it, please let me know so I can link to it from here.

Why would I want to add the badge to my blog?

The badge links back to the masterlist of MedLib blogs to indicate the blog’s membership in the growing community (and sense of community) of MedLib blogs(/bloggers). (This should serve also as a reminder to add your blog to this masterlist, if appropriate.)

To add this badge to your own blog, just copy and paste this code:


<a href="http://liswiki.org/wiki/Medlib_Blogs">
<img src="http://tinyurl.com/y32hh8/"></a>

Not sure how to do this with your particular blogging software? Email me at david[DOT]rothman[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll figure it out together. :)

June 16th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Technology | Comments Off

The “Natural Unit” of Health Information

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)

ACP Internist has a blog

http://blogs.acponline.org/acpinternist/

More on journals and blogs later this week.

May 28th, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, Technology | Comments (2)

« Older Entries

Subscribe

Posts (RSS)
Comments (RSS)

Enter your email address to receive email updates of new posts:



Search

 


Contact


Elsewhere Online

Reciprocal Blogroll