I have just overhauled the Apple iPhone for physicians entry on our wiki, linking to new information on ePocrates and Unbound Medicine. It was reported in early 2008 that Apple’s iPhone would ‘soft launch’ in Canada in July ’08. There are no indications that this is true, but you can now check for news on this iPhone in Canada website – http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/ to keep track of developments.
I didn’t attend this year’s CHLA/ABSC Conference in Halifax – but my cohort in crime, Greg Rowell, did…
He will be guest blogging over the next few days on UBC Google scholar blog, giving us his perspectives on this year’s national conference.
Although the attached photo is blurry, Greg is the chap on the far right in a white shirt (I’m standing behind him, to his right, dwarfed by his intellect).
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“Dear UBC Google Scholar blog readers,
I am back at my desk at the Royal Columbia Hospital Library in New Westminster, BC, after a busy week in Halifax, Nova Scotia where I attended the 2008 Canadian Health Libraries Association/ Association des bibliothéques de la santé du Canada Conference. The Conference planners and the city of Halifax were fine hosts. When I attend library conferences, I’m always looking for some simple wisdom to the following questions: ‘Am I doing things right? and am I doing the right things?’ This conference program (including posters) provided plenty of wisdom in both respects.
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“I started with a couple of CE courses.
The first – given by Carol O’Neil from the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Dalhousie University – was entitled “Course Design for Online Learning Tutorials.” As the program indicated, it was long on learning theory (Perry’s Scheme of Patterns of Cognitive Development, Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives, Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, Learning Outcomes) and short on technical aspects of developing online courses. This was covered well in another CE session I did not attend called “Creating Online Tutorials” presented by Gwendolyn MacNairn. I enjoyed the review of learning theory, but the best part was creating mental (concept) maps to identify what course content looks like, how various ideas are connected and how content relates to learner’s current knowledge (affecting their ability to assimilate new content). During one class exercise, I tried to map what our Library Education classes at the Fraser Health Authority look like; one attendee mapped the question “What database should I use?” The resulting discussion was excellent to help further refine mental maps and how content can be made more relevant to students. Other concepts that resonated for me related to learning outcomes; for example, ‘what is the essential learning that you want to take place in your tutorial’; ‘what are your student’s expectations for learning’.
Hmm, easy to forget these important bits, isn’t it?
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“The second course – ‘Canadian Copyright Law Current Issues for Canadians‘ – was delivered by Dr. Teresa Scassa. Her presentation covered basic principles of copyright, fair dealing for libraries and universities, copyright laws, licenses, reform and open access issues. From discussions in class, I realized that I am not the only librarian wondering if my libraries are complying with copyright properly. Scassa gave answers to our questions that began with “Well, it depends”. So, it seemed to me that Canadian copyright law is in need of reform (but reforms coming are possibly questionable – Bill C60 died with the Liberal government….and the new Conservative government’s take on copyright reform may be more restrictive).
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“The three major takeaways form this copyright session? First, in the absence of new government regulations, “best practices” are emerging that protect libraries as our current laws are applied and inadequacies addressed, particularly regarding digital materials. The “Fair dealing” context is derived from a legal victory by the Great Library of the Law Society of Canada; the notion of fair dealing is a good faith effort to demonstrate respect for copyright and was seen to be acceptable by the highest court in Canada. Second, know your vendor licensing agreements inside and out. License agreements can override and limit fair dealing provisions, such as photocopies for course packs, links to articles in course software and may also allow for uses outside of fair dealing provisions. Lastly, our copyright policies include warning notices on photocopiers (using the CANCOPY wording …copies not for sale, copying not to exceed more than 10% of a published work); this indemnification is important whether your institution has an agreement with CANCOPY or not.
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“The continuing education courses I took at CHLA/ABSC 2008 were two of many offered this year. You may want to ask your colleagues about other courses offered.
Tomorrow, I’ll give you my take on Andrew Booth’s keynote address on evidence-based library and information practice (EBLIP)”.
Cheers
Greg Rowell
If I were as young and smart as some of my youngest colleagues, I’d go travelling or working with the likes of Courtney Crummett, Robin Featherstone & Meredith Solomon. (Here they are as 2007 NLM Fellows.) I met all three of them at NLM.
Robin is, in fact, working at the Yale Medical Libraries, and I noticed that they have their own Cushing/Whitney Medical Library blog. I also discovered this really cool feature: the library has a pared-down ‘optimized’ website” for iPhone users.
What a great idea. Check it out!
This fresh, happy face belongs to an extraordinary young woman by the name of Valeria Gallo Stampino. Valeria worked at the UBC Biomedical Branch Library during her MLIS on a number of projects, was top student in our health libraries class, and participated as a full member of the SLAIS CHLA/ABSC student interest group.
If you are a Canadian health librarian, you will know the name William (‘Bill”) Fraser. He was, with Jim Henderson, a teacher of LIBR534 when I was an MLIS student and one man I wish I was more like. A prize in his memory is set up at SLAIS and, I am very happy to say, Valeria is the 2008 winner.
Previous winners have been Allan Cho and Eugene Barsky. Need I say more? Valeria was last year’s student to CHLA/ABSC, publishes and is presenting at conferences.
Valeria is a star on the rise. Remember her and watch for her at conferences.
I’ve wanted to download the Second Life client onto my work computer for months if only to give SL a good workout, but the SL client cannot be downloaded without IT administration. The same has been true of Google Earth – until today.
Check out Google‘s new brief video below or go directly to the Google Earth page and download the new api. You have to admit, Google is good sometimes, really good.
I’ve been getting indications on my Twitter feed this morning that Ryan and Kelli are rockin’ the house in Halifax during their CE workshop on Web 2.0.
Gosh, makes you feel good, doesn’t it? Wish I were there.
Preparatory to my presentations on open access (OA) with the Open Medicine team, I interviewed three prominent Canadian health librarians (Denise Koufogiannakis is a former health librarian) about their involvement in the OA movement and the launch of the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice journal. We also discussed top ways librarians can get involved in OA by collaborating with faculty.
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An e-mail conversation with Lindsay Glynn, Lorie Kloda & Denise Koufogiannakis:
1. GS: What can librarians do to get involved in OA? What are the benefits?
Lindsay:“Try to develop OA information pages at your library to improve general awareness of OA issues; increase the awareness of OA and competence among teaching staff, increase researcher knowledge about OA issues and increase amount of records in local and national repositories.”
Denise:”Show your solidarity with OA by featuring various open access journals on your library websites; do displays; have handouts ready; do presentations to the public, etc.” (For more information, see Denise’s powerpoint presentation.)
Lorie:”Deposit any papers you have done for conferences into E-LIS so that other librarians can access the professional literature.”
Denise offered these perspectives, also:
“Open access is a choice as to how you communicate with your peers. Why choose to limit communication when it is easy to make communication open? At EBLIP we are trying to bridge the gap between research and practice – if we do not make the content widely available to all, then we are not going to achieve that goal.
“The second is the librarian’s role in supporting faculty/researchers and new methods of scholarly communication. This is an important role for librarians. Taking a leadership role to inform and support faculty re: open access enables us to be part of a changing system. For me this is simply about moving towards more equitable access to scholarly information.”
“A good example for me has been the Canadian Journal of Sociology whose editor is at U of A. Over the past year or so Pam Ryan, Leah Vanderjagt and I worked with this editor to move his journal from a traditional print subscription model to an OA one. Without having the credibility of being editors ourselves and knowing the system/what was needed to make things work, it would have been much more difficult to facilitate the process. See Kevin’s article about his process of moving to OA here: http://informationr.net/ir/13-1/paper338.html”
Lindsay:
“Being involved in OA projects provides librarians with direct information to relay to others who are being introduced to this publication method. Faculty and students, for example, are asking numerous questions about these new author submission fees, how OA affects impact factors, whether or not an OA journal is as “respected” as non-OA journals, etc.
Dean said:
“Being involved in OM has provided me with essential knowledge to convey and to help faculty navigate new ideas. Librarians, particularly academic librarians, need to walk the walk and talk the talk when it comes to OA.”
Lindsay:
“From a personal and a professional perspective, there are other benefits. Quick turnaround for articles from submission to publication is quite attractive as is the wide and varied distribution. For librarians outside academia, it’s possible that they have less connection to OA and perhaps support for OA publishing. However, it doesn’t mean that librarians outside of academia can’t get involved. They can promote OA resources to their users, and take part in the revolution as bloggers, wikipedians, reviewers/editorial advisors for OA journals so that even though they are not authors, they are still actively involved in the movement and can increase their knowledge as a result.”
Important lessons:
Lindsay: The most important thing I’ve learned in my work in OA? So many important things – first, I I’ve learned that not all OA journals are built or managed in the same way and that because a journal is OA does not guarantee its authority or reliability.
Lorie: I have learned that OA is an excellent venue to reach a huge audience and readers who I would never expect to reach otherwise. The best thing I’ve learned and what has made the OM experience so incredible for me is the ease and pleasure of the international collaborations.
Dean: All the physicians and medical folks who volunteer for Open Medicine (and there are many) do so for no financial rewards or incentives. But they do it because they believe in OA are passionate about it, and are dedicated to it. I love that, and I respect it. I feel very lucky to know and be associated with these people, this journal and OA publishing.
Lorie:
“There has been a lot of evidence published recently about the benefits of OA in general, especially regarding the high impact of research/literature published in OA journals. This holds true for LIS literature as well.Other benefits include increased visibility of those publishing (to librarians and information professionals working at institutions with limited access to subscription serials).”
Denise:
“Increased access for those in related disciplines who may not otherwise encounter LIS literature, as well as to the general public (through search engines and institutional repositories, for example). Benefits relating to professional development of LIS professionals. By getting involved in OA projects, on any level, one learns about the process of research dissemination and the current (r)evolution.”
Lorie:
“For me, as a health sciences librarian interested in, among other things, consumer health information and knowledge translation, open access is linked very much to access to health information for health professionals and consumers. OA is part of a mindset of sharing research results that reflects the essential goal of conducting research: to share knowledge with other researchers, practitioners, and citizens.”
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2. Librarians outside of academia may not be supported in their quest to be involved in the publishing revolution of open access. How can they take part do you think?
Denise:“LIS professionals can contribute to OA initiatives as authors, editorial board members and peer reviewers for OA initiatives (e.g., journals, subject repositories).
“I think another way librarians outside of academia can be involved in the OA revolution is to spread the word and to educate yourselves. This is probably the most important role each of us can play. OA has real benefits for public library users, for journalists, patients, for primary school teachers, high school students, etc. All librarians can take part in educating and informing their user groups about this revolution in publishing.”
Lorie:
“I am on the editorial board of Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, a relatively new OA journal in LIS that publishes articles on research and innovation in all areas of information practice. LIS professionals can contribute as authors, editorial board members and peer reviewers for OA initiatives (e.g., journals, subject repositories).”
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3. What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your work in OA?
Lorie:
“On a practical level, I’ve learned a lot about the publication process. I think the most important thing I’ve learned has been, as previously mentioned, that open access is really just part of the broader commitment to make information available. In this way, it coincides perfectly with the basic ethics and tenets of our profession.”
Lindsay:
“Those of us working in academic libraries, particularly large academic research libraries, generally have greater resources and support for getting involved in OA. So – I hesitate to tell anyone how to get involved because their institutional needs, issues and requirements may be quite different from mine – and each of us knows this best. However, all librarians can get involved in small ways. It doesn’t require the resources needed to start your own journal — it may be as simple as pointing users to OA resources, cataloguing them, submitting professional articles written for conferences to OA journals, putting it into E-LIS so that other librarians in their subspecialty find content that is relevant to them in an OA source. I’m really proud of the fact that I can contribute regularly to the development of OA and our profession in an open access journal.”
Denise said:
“I guess OA has stressed the importance of taking control of my own publication output (being the change you wish to see in the world, and so forth). Around the time we started the journal I vowed that I wouldn’t publish in non-OA journals. This is such a simple thing for librarians. I mean, does it really make or break our careers if we publish in Journal of Academic Librarianship? There are good OA alternatives and it is easy to choose which journal we want to support. I try to guilt librarians into this all the time, but not sure if it’s working. “
Last week, much of the discussion on various American blogs about Microsoft’s decision to abandon its book digitization and academic search projects focussed on the software giant’s need for retrenchment (linked, I understand, to some internal reorganization and its ongoing attempts for a Yahoo takeover).
In any case, what I’d like to focus on here is about Microsoft’s plans to abandon the scholarly search space – namely, Academic Search. Microsoft entered this arena in 2006 in an attempt to compete with Google scholar, which was seen as a welcome addition and alternative to searching the academic literature.
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What is the academic search space? The academic search space (and our ability to search it) can be compared to a specialized information channel pointing to peer-reviewed content and all indexed material in all commercial databases; imagine a federated search tool that could search this massive space. This is the challenge that Microsoft seemed prepared to take on two years ago. As an academic librarian in the digital age, the end of Academic Search is the important issue for me.
The demise of Microsoft’s book digitization effort is a surprise (especially for the University of Toronto who signed up in 2006) but the overall impact on Canadian academic libraries will be minimal. Some academic librarians may even breath a sigh of relief as the message to universities is that private search companies should not be relied on to provide curatorial services. Google Book Search, of course, continues apace – causing sleepless nights for some academic librarians, and many more publishers – and seems poised to battle the concomitant intellectual property and copyright issues in the courts for years to come.
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It must be said that many academic librarians view ubiquitous digitization (and access) as a tangible threat to our in-house print artifacts and collections. The truth is that 24/7 open access usurps preservation but does so without providing reliable subject access to collections via traditional library catalogues. This is only one of the many reasons why librarians are biting their nails about the future of libraries and access to information (coupled with lowered gate counts, and reduced use of print).
Simply, Microsoft and Google, for all their philanthropic ways and development of free tools, are a threat to the way libraries plan for and envision services. Microsoft’s decision to end its book project is a cautionary tale. It reminds us – on any given day of the week – that search giants can pull the plug on us whenever and wherever they wish. We should not rely on them to preserve our collections or provide access to the historic record of human knowledge.
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No one who evaluated Microsoft’s Academic Search over the last two years will lament its end. It had some cool features, revealed sources more transparently than Google scholar, but did not catch on. Many undergraduate students that I talked to on the reference desk in 2008 hadn’t even heard of it.
So, why did Academic Search fail? Are there lessons there for Google scholar? Did Microsoft get bogged down in details, forgetting to keep it simple? A full two-thirds of the world (~70%) prefer Mother Google to search every day, and like its familiar, clean interface, so switching over to Google scholar is a mere click away. Google scholar‘s results are even integrated into Mother Google’s on screen I, as are Google’s digitized book collections.
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Time will tell whether the scholarly search space will ever be a truly open search space or whether it will be proprietarized for years to come. But librarians should be planning on better tools for themselves. I’ve been writing about the semantic web and the potential that might be represented by web 3.0 technologies for about the last year. I’m hopeful that a better, academic search space – one that can integrate relevant documents and data – can be developed in the future.
Perhaps a young venture capitalist is listening, and can make it happen, better and faster than Google or Microsoft. Perhaps even the library community…
Categories
The Top Five (5) Medical Mashups?
I’ve been searching (largely in vain) for the ‘Net’s best medical mashups (here are some). I noticed that the MLA’s web 2.0 coaches have been using the Cho article on mashups (not to mention other articles & mashup examples) and I have been updating the wiki entry on mashups in medicine in response.
I have the innate sense that there are many more medical mashups out there, and that some web 2.0 physician blogstars (like the affable Berci or the cogent Ves) or a librarian keener (Allan or Jeff) is working on a cool tool.
Why are mashups important? Conceptually, mashups are linked to the semantic web & web 3.0 due to their emphasis on connected data. See the wiki entry for more information and discussion, and e-mail me some of your favourite medical mash (if you have some).
Between the Twitter feeds, blog feed, web 2.0 webcasts, a web 2.0 course and MLA’s 2008 Conference bloggers – our American compatriots within the Medical Library Association have gone absolutely hog-wild for web 2.0 in recent months. It’s an impressive showing and exploration for those of us on this side of the 49th. However, I, for one, am green, green, green with envy – “…wishing I were somehow there again” has never seemed so appropriate!
The top names in U.S. medical library blogging were assembled for and reported on what clearly was an informative, collaborative, connected MLA 2008 conference in Chicago. Some of my former students attended, and at least two colleagues – so, I’ll get a report of the goings-on. However, you should check out the really fun videos, Krafty‘s & Scott’s comments, among others. This is exactly what library conferences (indeed, all conferences) should be like. My only regret is that I don’t like to travel (only under extreme duress will I do so) and don’t have the big bucks to travel to places like Chicago or Hawaii (MLA 2009).
What I find extraordinary about the Medical Library Association is its sheer size – talk about a critical mass of talent, people and skills. It stands to reason that MLA is 10x larger than our Canadian association, CHLA/ABSC, and the diversity and number of sessions is a testament to the American admonition ‘super-size it’. In fact, I’ve always loved American conferences for their size, energy and excitement.
I think it’s important for all of us interested in moving forward in the digital age to build the ‘evidence-base’ in using web 2.0 technologies. We also need to interrogate closely the underlying social and collaborative aspects of web 2.0 and be reminded that the merely social aspects are inadequate in moving our profession forward; sustained reflection and a renewed intellectual orientation are also critical.
Somehow, we need to find the best methods to contextualize social software for our library services, if only to optmize our digital and F2F time with users, and find better ways to build our constituencies and online services based on the evidence that traditional services are less relevant than ever.
Does this mean doing more quantitative research? Yes, I think it does. Does this mean qualitative evaluation and assessment of web 2.0, and a willingness to question why we are using these tools? Yes, this is critical for our future as we move forward, whether we find ourselves north or south of the 49th.