The Search Principle blog

Perhaps you have heard of me. My name is Dean Giustini, he of “How Google is Changing Medicine“, and UBC Google scholar blogger for the last few years. Some folks suggest that I have narcissistic blog disorder (NBD) with my continual drawing attention to medical librarians, my work as a Google watcher, and criticism of/advocacy for responsible Googlization in the information age. My reaction to that criticism is that health librarians have good reason to be self-centred. You’ve forgotten us. I’ve tried to remain silent during my 2007 sabbatical about your development of Google health, but given my emerging NBD – I can’t anymore. Well, it’s not in my nature to keep quiet.

When the aforementioned Google editorial appeared in the British Medical Journal in 2005, I touched base with Anurag Acharya about the potential for creating a specific channel in Google scholar that would help physicians find evidence-based information, fast. Remember: “Let’s call it Google Medicine.” Since then, the medical librarian and physician bloggers I know have been watching to see what your next move will be. From time to time, we hear rumours, what Adam Bosworth is saying/doing and now Roni Zeiger. Do you have any health librarians @ Google who are liaising with our professional associations – CHLA/ABSC and the MLA?

Here’s my suggestion. The reason I trumpet the expertise of health librarians is because we seem to be forgotten in the Google equation. As one of the few health librarians to write about the impact of Google in medicine, on physicians, I doubt you have ever acknowledged that librarians are equal partners with you in the information age. Do we even exist for you?? Yes, I know we’ve been asked to volunteer for Google health, and we know that the Medical Library Association is on board for that project (see commentary above). Medical librarians around the world look to MLA and the National Library of Medicine for leadership in providing reliable, trustworthy medical information to our constituency. But you need to consider an international group of health librarians to consult with you, if you are in fact building Google Medicine.

I’m coming out of my sabbatical early if you need my help. You see, it’s not all about NBD. Health librarians just want to be consulted, and we want to build these amazing tools with you. We understand the significance of your involvement in medicine.

Do you understand ours?

Dean Giustini
UBC Google scholar blogger
Open Medicine blogger
Open Access Librarian blogger
UBC Health Library wiki administrator

The speed of change in scientific and biomedical publishing is surprising sometimes (and the uptake of the use of Web 2.0 tools by the journal community).

Perhaps you know about PLoS One? Now, here’s Nature Precedings:

“Nature Precedings is a place for researchers to share documents, including presentations, posters, white papers, technical papers, supplementary findings, and manuscripts. It provides a rapid way to disseminate emerging results and new theories, solicit opinions, and record the provenance of ideas. It also makes such material easy toarchive, share and cite. The whole service is free of charge.”

And, even an editorial on this new project, intended to cover biomedicine, chemistry and the Earth sciences.

Will Google scholar crawl all of these knowledge objects? Where will all this fragmentation leave our searching? Boggles the mind. – DeanTechnorati Profile

….well, we are 31st out of 100 medical blogs. (Update: 35th)

Truth is, there are many blogs out there on the medical blogosphere that are not listed on this eDrugSearch.com ranking, but it’s interesting to finish that high up (given I’m on sabbatical).

I was personally happy to see Ves Dimov’s Clinical Cases and Images blog, and David Rothman’s technology blog, in the top 20. Open Medicine blog ranks 173rd (but we’re just starting over there). Michelle Kraft’s KraftyLibrarian.com is also in the top 200.

Wonder where we at UBC Health Library wiki fit into the medical wikisphere? This list is driven by quantitative measures, by the way, not qualitative. We all know what blogs are the most important in medicine and health librarianship.

– Dean Giustini, librarian-blogger

Canada’s positioning in an increasingly globalized world isn’t getting better. Today’s Conference Board of Canada June 2007 release of How Canada Performs: A Report Card on Canada will probably confirm your worst fears: simply put, we do poorly compared with other global economies – such as Switzerland, Japan and Nordic countries – getting a near failing grade on innovation (a “D”) and ranking 13th of 17 countries.

In Education and Skills, we get an “A” – but this is a little like students who excel in one subject while failing others. Despite our ability to deliver a high quality education to children and youth, a large percentage of adults with low level basic skills and literacy remain underserved. Additionally, we do not stimulate enough students to complete post-graduate degrees.

In Health, Canada is a leader in reducing tobacco and alcohol consumption, but we still have high rates of lung cancer due to high smoking rates in previous decades. The main problem? Our system lacks a focus on health promotion. Many health experts consider infant mortality to be a leading indicator of child health and the long-term well-being of a society. The number of infants in Canada who died before their first birthday averaged 5.3 per 1,000 live births in the year 2003, unusually high among developed countries.

Here, some of my Open Medicine colleagues discuss the circumstances that led to the launch of the Journal, and its existence as an example of open access’s contribution to academic freedom.

Willinsky J., Murray S., Kendall C., Palepu A. Doing Medical Journals Differently: Open Medicine, Open Access, and Academic Freedom. – Working paper.

Notable, quotable quotes:

1. “Open Medicine was born of an editorial interference incident in the field of medical publishing, a field which is distinguished by its own professional and commercial influences.” (You can say that again. DG)

2. “For all of the attention spent on finding the perfect economic model for increasing access to knowledge, it is important not to lose sight of scholarly communication’s other basic principles, beyond dissemination, namely editorial independence, intellectual integrity, and academic freedom.” (What models will survive?)

3. “The ability to start a new journal that is able to establish its intellectual, as well as financial, independence from forces and traditions that might otherwise compromise that independence remains a critical factor in guaranteeing academic freedom within the global scholarly community.”

4. …”opening science to a larger world has always been a motivating force in scholarly publishing, [but] this openness is not just a matter of journals. Today, it includes initiatives focused on open data, open source biology, open encyclopedias, and a number of different “open science” projects.” (Don’t forget open search.)

5. “Open Medicine has raised the stakes for open access by demonstrating how this new approach can be used today to reassert editorial independence, intellectual integrity, and academic freedom.” (And raised the stakes for librarians, I say.)

Some of you have asked if I am back – technically, I’m still on sabbatical. However, I want you all to set up your feed to Open Medicine blog – http://blog.openmedicine.ca/blog/feed.

Well, it’s a perennial debate. You can get an update on my (brief) thoughts at the Open Medicine blog. Will I write an update to “How Google is Changing Medicine“? Probably, but this is a good interim view. – Dean

Our session at the CHLA/ABSC conference included a group brainstorm on the future use of social software, and specifically what predictions we had based on our use of tools. The group discussion led to a critical analysis of the tools that we presented in terms of collaboration, instruction, marketing and outreach.

Here are the top ten (10) ideas around web 2.0 as articulated by those present:

1. Health librarians are using blogs/ wikis to communicate with users;

2. Wikis offer ways to collaborate and engage in ‘group think’;

3. A generational/digital divide exists in web 2.0, especially in consumer health;

4. Health librarians should identify early adopters to help them implement tools;

5. Hospital and health IT departments (and public service ministries) create barriers to using web 2.0 tools (especially Facebook, MySpace and Second Life);

6. Library hardware is not keeping pace with developments in web 2.0;

7. Podcasting is a useful supplement to library content, and video is being indexed in MEDLINE;

8. Blogs are being used as a platform for teaching and outreach;

9. Blogs and wikis help to raise the profile of health librarians;

10. Several health librarians are interested in Second Life, and yet can’t view it because it requries a downloaded client. Why can’t it be web-based?

We had a successful session at today’s continuing education (CE) course, held at the University of Ottawa Library. (A great computer lab complete with projected sound.) It was an interesting learning experience for me as a teacher, particularly as I try to see how the dynamics of the classroom can be facilitated, or not, and the implications of the learning theories I am studying when applied to my practice.

I was very interested in listening to the views of my colleagues who participated in the workshop – health librarians from across the country. The brainstorming session at the end of the workshop gave everyone an opportunity to talk; I’ll blog some of my reflections on the points raised – soon. In the meantime, enjoy the presentation.

Authored by Judy Inglis and myself, the Canadian Health Libraries Association (CHLA/ABSC) has published the following
New Factsheet on Podcasting for health librarians and physicians. Feel free to copy from it freely. (See also American health librarian, Michelle Kraft’s List of Podcasts and Vodcasts).

Part of this weekend’s continuing education course for our annual conference in Ottawa will be about podcasting, but for a fuller view have a look at Eugene Barsky’s and my powerpoints for Using social software in health libraries. – Dean

ps. The 2007 winner of the SLAIS Bill Fraser Prize in health librarianship? Allan Cho at Allan’s Library.