The Search Principle blog

Marcus Banks, a former NLM Associate, and a rising American health librarian, is a level-headed guy – and he doesn’t seem bothered by the “2.0” label, too much.

However, I wonder what he’d think of this article title in Lancet:

Office 2.0: a web 2.0 tool for international collaborative research. Lancet. 2008 May 31;371(9627):1837-8.

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The piece is a very brief correspondance, and not especially revelatory, but then this is not the authors’ intention. They bring to the attention of other physicians and Lancet readers the power of using ‘the web as platform’, especially for international, collaborative authoring of papers. This is terrific and cool (even their letter was composed using Google Docs.) However, I doubt we want to call this “office” 2.0 (despite the name of this conference. Oy).

I don’t want to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm about the web 2.0 craze – I’m stoked about it, too. But Gambadauro & Magos write “Wikis, blogs, and podcasts are probably the best known pillars of Web 2.0, but we would like to draw attention to another Web 2.0 tool, the “web office” or so-called Office 2.0.”

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Technically, the authors are right, I suppose. Moving standalone, proprietary (commercial) software like Microsoft Word to the web and using the web as a platform is a new way for physicians to co-write papers. But office 2.0 is not another web 2.0 tool as they say (it’s a microtrend, perhaps), and Google spreadsheet and Google Docs are the tools. I don’t really see this as a trend outside of web 2.0 despite a misuse of the term going back to 2006.

Sorry to invigilate web 2.0 (not my intention)! I hope the use of the 2.0 label in Lancet doesn’t trigger a revolution in misplaced 2.0s….have a good weekend, all!

Here is an updated list of My List of Top Medical Library & Physician blogs. I provide links (at the top) to the top 100 list of medical bloggers, and references (bottom) for further reading. I’ve removed blogs that have not posted in the last few months.

A relatively new health librarian’s name was brought to my attention recently when Greg sent me his three 2008 CHLA/ABSC reports: Francesca Frati. “Sono molto contento di fare la tua conoscenza!!” (I’ve gotta get out more: Francesca became a librarian in 2005.)

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Francesca presented at the 2008 conference, blogs at Info.Rx Cases, and is doing some interesting work in Montreal in patient and consumer information:

“Francesca Frati has an MLIS from Dalhousie University and is the wearer of many interconnected professional hats. She works at the Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital Health Sciences Library (HSL) as Patient Information Specialist and Instruction Librarian, at the Herzl Family Practise Centre (HFPC) as Patient Information Coordinator, and in her spare (work) time provides research support for physicians. Francesca is a member of the advisory committee for the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Conference on Practice Improvement: ‘Blueprint for the Medical Home‘.

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Here are some of Francesca’s reflections on CHLA/ABSC 2008.

I look forward to meeting Francesca at the next conference. In the meantime, here’s a video of a recent presentation she delivered in Montreal.

A new index measuring a scientist’s impact in his/her field has been developed called the Wu index or w-index. Developed by Qiang Wu from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, it was published as The w-index: A significant improvement of the h-index in this week’s Physics arxiv.

Wu’s index is similar to the h-index that was developed in 2005 by physicist Jorge Hirsch at the University of California at San Diego. According to Hirsch’s criteria, researchers with h-indexes of, say, 9, suggest that they have published at least 9 papers, each of which has been cited 9 or more times. On the other hand, the ‘w-index’ indicates that researchers have published w papers, with at least 10w citations each. Researchers with w-indexes of 24 mean they have 24 papers with at least 240 citations each.

In his paper, Wu says that the index is an improvement on the h-index as it “more accurately reflects the influence of a scientist’s top papers”. He concedes that the index could be called the “10h-index”. The w-index is easy to work out using databases like Web of Science, Scopus from Elsevier or Google scholar. It can be determined in the same way as the h-index by searching for a researcher’s name and then listing all their papers according to citations – with the highest first.

One Canadian health librarian who has really made her mark on our field is Judy Inglis. When I get the chance to collaborate with her, I jump at the opportunity. If you want to get involved in doing research, perhaps the time has come for you to find someone to collaborate with?

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
— Harry S. Truman

Think back over your career and ask yourself some questions about collaboration. Who did I want to work with most? Which of my collaborations has been the most rewarding? Have I reached my goals alone, or with others?

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For me, some of the most meaningful work I have done started with non-web 2.0 collaborations, co-teaching and team-presenting at conferences: over the years, there has been Helmer-Giustini, Richardson-Giustini, Barsky-Giustini, Rowell-Giustini, Saunders-Giustini, Wiebe-Giustini, Cho-Giustini and Durland-Giustini.

Before there was web 2.0, there was Harris-Giustini. Linda Harris is an extraordinary health librarian who works at the Cross Cancer Institute Library in Edmonton, Alberta. I worked with Linda in the 1990s; I’ve never known any librarian to work harder.

What’s the point of all this reminiscing about working with others? … health librarianship is about collaboration and working together. It’s an effective way to build your career. Partnerships and team-building have been critical for me, and I’d like to take a moment to thank each and every one of the librarians I’ve worked with (oh, I forgot Blanchard-Giustini).

And, now, Naslund Giustini! (in final proofs)

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Towards school library 2.0: an introduction to social software tools for teacher-librarians.
by Jo-Anne Naslund & Dean Giustini [an article in press – accepted, peer-reviewed]

Abstract: This article is an introduction to some of the most popular web 2.0 learning tools for teachers and teacher-librarians. The authors supplement their discussion of social software by citing representative examples and projects that show how they might be applied in school settings. Most importantly, the authors (both academic librarians) argue that social software has the potential to transform student learning. A number of these emerging technologies impact “teaching, learning and creative expression within learning-focused organizations” (Horizon Report, 2008); and, encourage collaboration, knowledge-building and collective intelligence (‘wisdom of the crowds’). In promoting web 2.0, teacher-librarians can play prominent roles in schools and raise the awareness of relevant pedagogies for the iGeneration (Wikipedia, 2008). Many teachers have already dubbed this trend school library 2.0 (Harris, 2005).

Dear UBC Google scholar blog readers…

“This is the third (and final) part of a series about the 2008 CHLA/ABSC conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and what it held for me (Greg Rowell), written in a stream of consciousness style:

1) Minding the Gap on Patient Education,
2) Info(r)mediation
3) What Your Patient Reads
4) Clinical Information Prescriptions, and
5) Open Access and Open Medicine.

“At the same time, vendors were vending, librarians eating lots o’ lobster, a lovely waterfront (as nice as Vancouver’s), wind, some rain (and sleet), a hill (the Citadel) to negotiate to and from the Lord Nelson and a shuttle bus route and expensive cab ride between the airport and downtown Halifax…….and catching up with old acquaintances and a few new ones, too.

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1) Minding the Gap on Patient Education

“Michelle Helliwell addressed an important topic front and centre for me in Fraser Health. Her talk, entitled “Minding the Gap: Understanding current practice of front line health workers as information providers to patients: Implications for service”, focussed on a three (3) year descriptive research project which defined current library and information practice in a largely rural area that covers three district health authorities in southern Nova Scotia. She did a gap needs-analysis, determined what was done elsewhere and how service gaps could be addressed.

Helliwell discovered that her largely rural population of information users were, per capita, older patients, sent to the Internet for information, and yet had limited access to the internet. She discovered that health information providers spent inordinate amounts of time creating handouts with no standardization. She drafted patient information policies and devised a plan for access to the information via an online catalogue.

“For more about Health Literacy issues visit’s Michelle’s blog at http://thehealthliteracyblog.blogspot.com/

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2. Info(r)mediation
“Nadine Wathen, as assistant professor at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, presented “Comparative Analysis of Librarians and Health Professionals as Health Info(r)mediators” and copies of a book she co-authored entitled Health Information and Technology: Mediating Health Information in a Changing Socio-technical Landscape were available. The book has content from her presentation and much more.

“Wathen et al studied how health professionals get information and to what extent librarians act as intermediaries in the delivery of information and how they mediate type and quality of information provided. This in part explains a somewhat awkward but novel word in the title of her presentation info(r)mediator.

“Based on her presentation, I think I’d buy the book.

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3. What Your Patient Reads

“Lori Giles-Smith and Christine Shaw-Daigle from the Neil John Maclean Health Science Library, University of Manitoba, discussed a new current awareness service called “What Your Patient Reads”, an innovative idea that provides physicians with background information (bibliography and primary citations) and media headlines of health events and treatments to be better prepared for patient questions in the clinic.

4. Clinical Information Prescriptions

“Francesca Frati spoke about the Clinical Information Prescription program that she is working on at Herzl Family Practice Centre in Montreal. She is able to book appointment time with patients to interview them about their information needs and find the information for prescriptions written by the physicians at the clinic she works in. Both of these programs spoke to me about practical, important ways that we can provide information to our professional and patient/family users.

“‘Never judge a book by its cover’ or judge an information specialist’s hair (in my case the lack of it) …This is how Geoff Hynes, a youngish but obviously wise, Senior Policy Analyst at CIHR started his presentation. The combination of wind and Hyne’s frizzy hair garnered him smiles on the streets of Halifax, apparently. Hynes spoke about CIHR’s new policy requiring grant recipients to make their publications available online (in open-access journals or institutional repositories) within six months of publication. CIHR is partnering with CISTI to create PubMedCentral Canada and a platform for dissemination of health research.

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5. Open Access and Open Medicine

“The Conference closed with a keynote from Dr. Stephen Choi, an emergency room physician and editor of Open Medicine. As a former editor at the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Choi spoke about the failures of Canadian medical publishing which makes huge profits from publicly-funded research; the influence of big pharma; successes such as the growing open access movement and challenges (about funding not-for-profit journals).

Discussion after Choi’s presentation focussed on sustainable ways to fund OA journals. Suggestions from librarians included charging small fees for article downloading (until publishing costs are recovered, then free in perpetuity) to author pay models (already the case for some journals) to institutional subscriptions. Although Choi knew these strategies, he did not embrace them because Open Medicine relies on donations at the moment. For me, this signalled a commitment to maintaining free, open access (as much as possible) to medical information. Choi also made a point of mentioning the editorial team of Open Medicine consisted of many health professionals including a health librarian (Dean Giustini).

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There were other presentations in the concurrent sessions (and, posters which were excellent). I encourage you to review the program and watch for presentations to be loaded onto the website.

Thank you to the Program Committee for a fine conference and to Halifax a fine host city and to Dean for giving me space to write about CHLA/ABSC 2008.

Next year CHLA/ABSC Conference 2009 The Sky’s the Limit will be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Sincerely,

Greg Rowell
Health Librarian, Royal Columbian Hospital, New Westminster, BC

Wikia Search – an ‘open-source search engine’ and brainchild of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales – has announced that end-users can now participate in building the WikiSearch index by adding, deleting and rating websites. The four pillars of Wikia search? Transparency, Community, Quality, Privacy.

Wales is saying that this ‘wisdom of the crowds’ search project is an overhaul of search. (see the full interview in PC World, and a Forbes.com interview as well). I am a believer in wikis as a means of engaging web users in collaborative ‘group think’ – if this works, all of the work we see on Wikipedia, will be brought to searching the web. This should be very interesting, searchers!

I didn’t attend the 2008 CHLA/ABSC Conference – but Greg Rowell, my colleague, did…he will be a guest blogging here over the next few days (here’s letter #1) and talking about the conference from different perspectives.

Today, in letter #2, Greg provides an excellent overview of Andrew Booth’s keynote: “Three Wheels on our (Band)Wagon: can EBLIP meet the challenges ahead?”

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Greg:
“Having read a bit of the work of Andrew Booth I was really looking forward to his keynote address. With his adept speaking ability and full grasp of evidence-based topics he did not let me down. For those of you not familiar with evidence-based library and information practice (EBLIP) – its follows the definition of evidence-based practice.

EBLIP is defined as “…an approach to information practice that promotes the collection, interpretation and integration of valid, important and applicable user-reported, practitioner-observed and research derived evidence” in our field. The best available evidence is moderated by user needs and applied to improve the quality of professional judgment (such that we are not all responding to the evidence in exactly the same way).

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“According to Booth, even if we are keenly aware of the possibilities derived from using EBLIP (due to our proximity to the promotion of evidence based practice in our users), health librarians have some work to do to ensure that we generate, measure, analyze and use/translate evidence in our day-to-day library activities.

“Early in his keynote address, Booth cited a call by Lindsay Glynn in 2000 for people to report their EBLIP success stories and that uptake was minimal – not a good sign at the time.

“Booth used a metaphor that the concepts of ‘user reported’, ‘practitioner observed’ and ‘research derived’ information were like 3 cogwheels that must all mesh together in order for practice to move forward. He suggested that the “research derived” cogwheel was somewhat deficient and that this is what should be focused on to compensate for past deficiencies in the practice of EBLIP.

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Greg:
“Booth reported that EBLIP work has been undertaken to various degrees in Canada, Australia, UK, and US (see accompanying links below), but noted there are questions for and against its relevancy (it’s yet another thing to do vs it’s something we’re already doing anyway; no time vs can’t afford not to; no capacity to work harder vs work smarter; no evidence vs make the evidence). Among many works he cited, this simple model from 2007 (from EBLIP4) promotes a simple way forward:

Data…………….Act…………….Analyze
What?………….So what?……..Now what?
Findings………..Implications….Recommendations

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Greg:
“Booth asked the audience to create a culture of question/question resolution and to share our answers with others. He asked that we integrate evidence into our day-to-day practice and put EBLIP into job descriptions of new hires, use reflective practice and move on from focusing on problems to gain the traction we need to create a sustaining culture of practice.

“Of the all information Booth presented, the observation that rang most true for me was his section on reflective practice. He characterized the tenets of reflective practice as the state of constant questioning, skepticism of current practice, an ability to listen to the value of others perspectives, an awareness of the validity and limitations of one’s own knowledge and a knowledge of the levels of evidence. Early in his talk he questioned that in many cases our practice was on “evaluation bypass.” Specifically he wondered about the value of the blog created by the University of Sheffield’s School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR).

Booth suggested the blog had “novelty value.” It was at this point in his talk I had visions of reflective practice and blog guru Dean Giustini dancing in my head. Clearly, depending on the scope and purpose of the blog , the value of it (novelty or practice enhancing) can and should be independently measured.

In closing, Booth challenged the audience to identify our organizations’ imperatives and align our research and practice strategies (reflective or otherwise) to match those imperatives.

Not a bad strategy I think…what do you think?”

Greg Rowell, Manager, Library Services – Royal Columbian Hospital

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References:

Booth’s talk was laced with references that I have partial citations to so I have done some quick searches to provide links to some of the more important information. I believe at some point his presentation will be available on the conference website so you will be able to see his references.

1. http://www.slideshare.net/tag/eblip
2. http://www.newcastle.edu.au/service/library/gosford/ebl/
3. newcastle.edu.au/service/library/gosford/ebl/toolkit/evidencesummaries.html
4. http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP
5. http://www.eblip4.unc.edu/index.html
6. http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=004326897958477606950%3Adjcbsrxkatm

EBLIP 5 is June 29th – July 3rd, 2009 in Stockholm, Sweden. The theme is “Bridging the gap” and a website is under development.

I have created a wiki entry for a research concept I learned about while at the Canadian Council on Learning that may have applicability in biomedicine: rapid evidence-assessments (REAs).

Rapid evidence-assessments (REAs) are appraisals of existing evidence that sit somewhere between health technology assessments (HTAs) and fully-developed systematic reviews. In that sense, they are related to the notion of ‘scoping the search’ and even questions scans but are more involved and detailed than either of those. REAs order and filter research in a similar way to systematic reviews, but meet urgent timelines of decision-makers at national or local levels.

The slow, expensive and laborious process of systematic review searching cannot be realistically undertaken for every major issue that arises in the clinic. A first step may be to find out what has already been written and what is already known about a topic – this is where health librarians may want to suggest REAs for their users.