The Search Principle blog

To many health & science librarians, Scirus.com is a bit of an unknown entity. What is it? is the question I usually get when I mention it. This is too bad; health librarians without access to EMBASE might find that Scirus is a reasonable free way to search for some of the European drug literature – 7.3 million items. Emphasis: might. I’ll review/retest the interface and content later in the week…

Barsky and I compared Scirus with PubMed and Google scholar some years ago. But I must confess that I forget to use Scirus. Many physicians don’t even know about it, or mention it. Could it be its rather dull user interface? Its lack of oomph? Clunky results display? Its blatant push and marketing ploy for Elsevier content?

All of that has improved in the Scirus redesign. I really like the categorized left sidebar! Check it out, it’s easier to navigate across the documents display now.

Truth is that Scirus is a really easy-to-use tool with lots of content. It’s had a nice facelift in 2008, and its new homepage claims that it is “the most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web. With over 450 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.”

My favourite part is Scirus’ transparent indexing practices (read: unlike Google’s). Check out the evolving entry I wrote on Scirus in the UBC Health Library wiki.

I got so perturbed in posting about the LJ’s 2008 Movers and Shakers, and its lack of Canadians, that I failed to notice steam coming outta my ears and the fact that the VPL’s Alex Youngberg (lib tech) got recognized. Congratulations to you, Alex.

In any case, since we’re recognizing everyone but librarians, Matthew Buckland is a thinker and a real mover and shaker. His slideshare is worth going through for its analysis, grouping of ideas and understanding of the issues affecting the future web.

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Many of the ideas of the semantic web originate with Sir Tim Berners-Lee who is a key figure in the evolution of the web. Berners-Lee is also widely-considered to be the web’s ‘inventor’. The semantic web has been debated since 2001 but in 2008 is gaining greater currency. Even the search engine giants are beginning to look at the possibilities presented by the semantic web:

Web 3.0 – Yahoo! Eyes The Big Picture By Adopting Semantic Web Standards

Mashups in medicine are an area of experimentation and linked to Web 3.0. But what are mashups, exactly? Put simply, mashups are hybrid tools that take two information sources merging certain aspects of each to create a novel third source.

Mashups also share in the notions of open, participative and collaborative content creation of web 2.0 – remember that?

By utilizing publicly-available and open source code, mashups draw on the technologies of current awareness tools like RSS feeds. Experimental mashups are worthy of examination by health librarians interested in exploring new, creative methods of information delivery.

Medical mashup examples:
1. Biowizard – http://www.biowizard.com/

Biowizard is an online social community where researchers can load, share and search for publications (and ‘digg’ or rate them), search PubMed, share research interests, join groups, upload photos and chat live with others on the system. I think of it as a filtering and search mashup. Caveat: annoying popups.

2. HEALTHmap – http://healthmap.org/

HEALTHmap brings different data sources together to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases, and their effects on human and animal health. It combines Google Maps and RSS feeds from different news sources, including Google News, ProMED, the World Health Organization and Euro Surveillance. Recommended: academic hospital-based.

3. VIMO – http://www.vimo.com

Vimo is an integrated comparison-shopping portal that allows businesses and consumers to research, rate and purchase health insurance and savings accounts (HSAs), and select physician profiles from across the U.S. It brings together private-public data sources so that health consumers can find physicians while comparing prices for procedures at each hospital. Caveat: U.S. only, commercial.

Are physicians and librarians using mashups?
Some health librarians are unable to utilize mashups due to the controls put in place by IT departments. However, I recommend we find ways to look at these new technologies even if it means doing it on our own time, from home.

Mashup editors

Several mashup platforms help users create mashups:
1. Google Mashup Editor – http://www.googlemashups.com
2. Microsoft Popfly – http://www.popfly.com/
3. Serena Mashup Composer – http://www.serena.com/mashups
4. Yahoo pipes – http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

2008 Developments

Raymond Yee (see his wiki) from the UC Berkeley School of Information, is the originator of the phrase “gather, create, share” and known for his work on the Scholar’s Box. His 2008 book is called Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services. It has an accompanying blog called the Mashup Guide which has material from the book, including a table of contents.

2008 Interview with Sir Iain Chalmers – see wiki entry

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Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to my readers, many of whom are physicians and health librarians who perform comprehensive searches of the literature. In 2006, the last time we spoke, we discussed the “systematic integration of primary research” in medicine.

1. Have we made progress in cumulating the evidence?

“Yes, there has been progress. There has been an explosion in the number of reports of systematic reviews, and in the use of this form of research by those preparing evidence summaries and clinical guidelines. In particular, it is encouraging that the editors of some important journals – PLoS Medicine and the Lancet are examples – have made clear that they value systematic reviews. Even the aloof New England Journal of Medicine has quietly come round to the realisation that it needs to help its readers by publishing reports of this kind of research.

However, there remains a long way to go, as evidenced in:

Clarke M, Hopewell S, Chalmers I. Reports of clinical trials should begin and end with up-to-date systematic reviews of other relevant evidence: a status report. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 2007 ;100:187-190. and Cooper NJ, Jones DR, Sutton AJ. The use of systematic reviews when designing studies. Clinical Trials 2005;2:260-264.

“Until every new piece of research begins by referring to one or more systematic reviews of relevant existing evidence it should be assumed that the research has not been designed as well as it could have been, and that there will be inappropriate duplication (as distinct from appropriate, planned replication). See: Chalmers I. The lethal consequences of failing to make use of all relevant evidence about the effects of medical treatments: the need for systematic reviews. In: Rothwell P, ed. Treating individuals. London: Lancet, 2007, pp 37-58.”

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2. A pernicious problem in evidence cumulation is fragmentation of the medical literature. Is the best evidence not in MEDLINE and Cochrane anyway?

“It’s certainly very tedious, but it’s necessary to try to deal with various forms of reporting bias. For example, only two thirds of the clinical trials reported in conference abstracts go on to appear in the kind of full reports that are included in Medline, and those that do are more likely to have positive results Scherer RW, Langenberg P, von Elm E. Full publication of results initially presented in abstracts. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007, Issue 2.

No-one who is concerned to obtain unbiased estimates of the effects of treatments can afford to acquiesce in this situation and rely only on what happens to get into Medline. Indeed, had researchers at Johns Hopkins not relied on Medline in designing one of their studies, a young lab assistant might not have lost her life in a physiological experiment [McLellan F. 1966 and all that – when is a literature search done? Lancet 2001;358:646.]”

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3. Another problem is the “underpowered” trials. Are most highly powered trials not in the high impact journals?

“It’s very rare to hear someone suggest that a trial is over-powered. All trials are underpowered to detect some important effects (for example, effect modification in subgroups, or rare side effects). Tom Chalmers once said that the most damaging paper he had ever coauthored was Freiman JA, Chalmers TC, Smith H Jr, Kuebler RR. The importance of beta, the type II error and sample size in the design and interpretation of the randomized control trial. Survey of 71 “negative” trials. NEJM 1978;299:690-694.

Schulz and Grimes have a very good discussion of this issue in: Sample size calculations in randomised trials: mandatory and mystical. Lancet 2005; 365: 1348-53. The key issue is that all well-designed trials should be reported publically whatever their statistical power or assumed applicability.

Physicians who allow their practice to be guided by the results of individual trials in high impact journals, rather than by systematic reviews of all relevant trials, risk avoidable harm to their patients, either by withholding treatments that are useful, or by prescribing treatments that are very unlikely to be useful and may be harmful. I’ve given illustrations of this in Chalmers I. The lethal consequences of failing to make use of all relevant evidence about the effects of medical treatments: the need for systematic reviews. In: Rothwell P, ed. Treating individuals. London: Lancet, 2007, pp 37-58.”

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For more information about Dr. Chalmers, see his Wikipedia entry. – Dean

I don’t want to berate our American colleagues about forgetting us. I’ve met many American health librarians that I really like: Marcus Banks, Courtney Crummett, Connie Schardt.

However, let’s be honest. As Canadians, we are used to Americans knowing little about us. Do you know who our prime minister is? I don’t want to overstate this, but I find it irksome when I see recent surveys asking about the future of health librarianship training that do not include us. This question was posed to “health librarians” today, and the results will be presented at MLA 2008:

“As new librarians in the Health Sciences field, Ivonne Martinez and Michele Malloy (Dahlgren Library, Georgetown University Medical Center) discussed the correlation between courses offered within MLS programs and the job duties included in everyday Health Sciences library work. At the MLA 2008 annual meeting we will present a paper entitled ‘Practicality vs. Theory: Are we Preparing Health Sciences Librarians?’, and are asking for your participation. We are seeking newly graduated librarians (within the past 5 years) from ALA accredited programs who are now holding professional positions in Health Sciences within the United States.”

I suppose I should just fill out the survey, and keep quiet. However, given that we have a number of Canadian-trained health librarians living and working in the United States – ie. Joanne Gard Marshall, Robin Featherstone and vice versa – and we should be working together, can we be a little bit less patriarchal, less insular in the future?

I would gently like to make a recommendation to all American health librarians who read this blog: talk to us a little bit more. Come to our conferences. Engage us on our blogs.

We are doing some innovative things up here in the Frozen North. The land of hockey.

Greg and I are doing lots in training future health librarians. So is my colleague at Dalhousie University, Jackie MacDonald, in her course INFO 6750.

Think about it….eh?

Over the course of my career as a librarian, I have been making connections (using the technologies of the moment) with and between people. It’s one of the best aspects of my work. As librarians, we get to meet interesting regular folk and students, a whole lot of brilliant people who need our expertise, and everything in between. I try to make every interaction I have with patrons about connecting them with ideas.

Without over-simplifying, this is what the semantic web is about – making connections between documents, their ideas (and intellectual content) and the people we serve in libraries. If the web is going to be the platform for ideas and lifelong learning well into the 21st century – perhaps something else will replace it? – then librarians need to take a good look at the emerging semantic web.

Web technologists have a problem though: why can’t they explain the semantic web to laypeople? What is it? we want to know. Tell me simply. A global web of data. A semantic graph. Web 3.0. I argue that this is where librarians can speak up. We have a unique ability to connect with people, the ideas in books and how they relate to other containers of knowledge. We understand how to draw out meaning from documents using thesauri and other standardization/controls.

Unfortunately, there are those who will muddle the message. As information specialists in the digital age, we can stress that the semantic web (or, Web 3.0 as some prefer) is about meaning. The meaning inherent in knowledge objects, books and journal articles. As librarians, we can use our skills, knowledge and abilities to create that, using as a constructive force as we move into web 3.0.

ps. The Cho/Giustini paper on web 3.0 should be out early next week, if not sooner.

What irks me most about the Facebook fracas at Ryerson is that the reportage has been so misleading. In one story, Chris Avenir is running a legit study group; in another, it’s a group of exam cheaters. How are they cheating exactly? It’s not clear. And how do you cheat exactly during an exam using Facebook? I don’t get it. Is that what you call an Open Facebook Exam (OFE)?

So far, danah boyd – arguably the Queen of Social Networks’ analysis – has not discussed this international news story on her apophenic blog. Maybe they don’t get Canadian news at Berkeley. Not a peep from Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW 2008 at his disastrous keynote. I guess he had other things on his mind.

In any case, the professors at Ryerson know in their hearts that students are sharing answers to difficult questions across the scholarly landscape. And so they (the students) should. Some of the most powerful learning at universities takes place after class, when the debates get heated and students try out new ideas and modes of expression. How it works in chemistry study groups online, I dunno but for heaven’s sake – peer to peer learning in the digital playground is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s in the Vygotskian tradition. So what did this student do wrong??

This Facebook story is about a bunch of things we face in our evolving society. First, it’s clearly a clash between iGens (the Internet Generation) and the Old-Fogies at Ryerson. It’s also about the fears that administrators have around technology and the worries that come from students sharing information as a form of subversion. Freireian subversion.

I say, go kids. Push the technology envelope. If Avenir gets charged this week with 146 counts of “cheating” – one count for each student found Facebooking – I say organize and pushback. We’ll be watching how this works out over the week.

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Related:

1. Ryerson student fighting cheating charges for Facebook study group – http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/03/06/facebook-study.html

2. The Breakfast Club – University Facebook Policies http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/university-facebook-policies-breakfast.html

During the sabbatical, I began to contemplate how it was that Google could pose such a threat to the future of academic libraries. How had they taken on the role of librarians so quickly in meeting the basic information needs of undergraduates? And, how was Google poised to take more control of the digital information landscape in the future?

The reasons seem clear. Apart from its search tools, Google serves as a platform for knowledge-creation and consumption. It then uses the platform to make billions.

What also seems clear is that the search giant is more than a search engine – check out Google Sites for example. As this short YouTube interview with David Eun, Google’s Content VP, illustrates, Google sees itself as providing the tools, computer power and platform for knowledge-creation. Librarians should provide pushback by strategizing how to gain this work back from the search giant.

For one, academic libraries should be quick to host new scholarly journals using OJS. Simon Fraser University’s Library is currently hosting Open medicine, for example. [Well done, Lynn, Brian et al.] Academic librarians should be creating their own content through blogging and wiki-ing – as we do at UBC Health library wiki.

These are some of the ways that we can beat Google at its own game: by taking back some control over the way that faculty, staff and students publish their ideas, and by creating our own intellectual content, writing e-books and e-articles. It’s no longer enough to be custodians of content we have to nurture and foster it within the larger context of the web’s future.

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Google’s VP “Content” David Eun on the web as platform:

During my stint at the Canadian Council on Learning, I was convinced of the important work of this group of PhDs and research scientists (Terri Thompson, for example), systematic reviewers and search specialist librarians (like Will Durland).

To keep up-to-date with the work of this organization, my suggestion is to sign up for some e-alerts like the helpful Learning Link. I get news about newly-published papers, upcoming lectures and recent releases of the Journal of Applied Research on Learning.

1. A Vision for a Health Literate Canada by CPHA’s Expert Panel on Health Literacy, funded by CCL’s Health and Learning Knowledge Centre, released March 3, 2008

2. University of Victoria’s Dr. Lorna Williams, the fourth scholar featured in CCL’s Minerva Lecture Series, starts her cross-Canada tour in Toronto on March 17, 2008, presenting “Weaving worlds: Enhancing the learning of Aboriginal students”

3. Descriptions of CCL-funded research on adult learning are now online.