Welcome to the MedLib’s Round 1.9. This month, the MedLib’s Round did not specify a special theme. This may have encouraged medical librarians and you to submit articles as 13 16 people took part in this round. It is always interesting to read medical librarians’ concerns as they are using state-of-the-art tools and techniques to work better and face the new challenges of communication, information retrieval and are always keen on sharing their impression on new services and debates. You will notice that this month, the MedLib’s Round leaves room for discussions on Social Media, web 2.0 services and Tips for health.

Thoughts

• David Eddy Delivers Controversial Reinertsen Lecture About Future of Evidence-based Medicine posted at ICSI Health Care Blog by Kent Bottles, MD.

Dr. David Eddy is a controversial doctor that questions the reliability of evidence-based medicine. He was invited at the Institute for Clinical System Improvements by Kent Bottles, Chief Knowledge Officer at this institute in early november. His conference was remarkable for two reasons. First one is that more than 300 people gathered to attend it. Second is that no one would have guessed Dr. David Eddy would challenge people to think about the future of ICSI and of evidence-based medicine. An extensive post you should read to keep updated on the future of evidence based medicine. (Follow Kent Bottles on twitter)

• Technology & Medicine: new screens on Alisha764’s blog

Alisha Miles shares with us her interest for new technologies and their interest for medicine and health information. In that case, she focuses on the new screens available or on the market or to be released soon and wonders about their possible uses. (Follow Alisha764 on twitter)

Social Media in health

• How Can We Help? Roles for Librarians in Public Health on PH/HA News by Alison Aldrich

Alison exposes her feelings after she attended the American Public Health Association conferences. Her post is a nice sum up of the conference and the people that were there as lecturers. The amount of conferences about social media for health matters lets us guess its importance in discussions. She raises a great question about the importance of advocating open access to public health research too. Indeed, she spent a time in the National Library of Medicine’s booth in the exhibit hall where she could talk about one common question: “how can I get all of your journal articles for free?“.

• What is Google Wave and why should I care? on Krafty Library.

Michelle sums up what is google Wave about and how you can use it. This article will be perfect for you to discover, understand and start using Wave in a proper way. She describes how medecial librarians have already created dedicated waves but still doubts about usefulness of the tool. (Follow her on Krafty)

• Manhunt: Google Wave for Community (Emergency?) Communication posted at Eagle Dawg Blog by Nicole S. Dettmar.

Nicole took part in the google wave about the manhunt in Seattle that happened in early december. She shows how powerful was the very google wave as to information exchange and how users helped enriching previous content. At the same time, she raises the problem of false information in waves (new email tool from google encouraging real time exchange) and spam that may get into these new communication channels. (Follow EagleDawg on twitter)

• FDASM Highlights for UM Stakeholders, pt. 1: Early Presenters as SWOT-Plus posted at Emerging Technologies Librarian by Patricia F Anderson

Patricia wrote a great post (the second) on the highlights of the FDASM. The FDASM is an initiative from the FDA about the use of internet and social media for health related communications for FDA-regulated products. This public hearing held in early november was a beginning to knowing and discovering how to use social media channels to communicate about products. In that field, she recalls how the FDA has already been providing essential resources online. There is more to learn and I encourage you to read it. (Follow Patricia F. Anderson on twitter)

Web 2.0 services for health

• Biomedical search on Biomedsearch by Dr. Shock on Shock M.D.

In this article, we learn with Dr Shock about a new tool that wants to provide free access to documents relating to the biomedical field. He explains the functions of this search engine and wonders about whether it can be an alternative to the redesigned pubmed.

• How to switch from one to the other antidepressant by Dr Shock.

There’s one common problem with antidepressant which is either that the antidepressant does not work or provokes side effects. When that happens, you have to switch from one to another. This can be a tricky task and Dr. Shock presents us some great resources websites to manage it. (Follow Dr. Shock on twitter)

• Medpedia Now Includes News & Analysis, Alerts, Q&A by Walter Jessen on HighlightHealth

Walter Jessen focuses here on new functionalities brought recently to Medpedia and create a richer experience for users. Mepdedia is a medical wiki and has useful functionalities. You will now be able to use in Medpedia the following features: News & Analysis from over 150 professionals, Alerts from real time web platforms and Answers (a kind of medical Yahoo Answers). He then wonders about the possibility for Medpedia to become a medical wikipedia thanks to the amount of reliable information it has. (Follow HighlightHealth on twitter)

Tips

• Adding Methodological Filters to MyNCBI posted at Laika’s MedLibLog by Jacqueline

Jacqueline has created a great tutorial to learn how to add methodological filters to MyNCBI. MyNCBI is one’s account on Pubmed. Obviously, creating filters is a must-use option when you are keen on research and need to automate search processes. In that case, she shows how Pubmed allows to create and run advanced filters to save time. It is always nice to read well detailed techniques that will turn the reader in a better prepared person for searches. Jacqueline writes a lot about Pubmed and she has a great experience with it. Enjoy learning with her. (Follow Laikas on twitter)

• How to follow Twitter users in Google Reader on Clinical Cases and Images Blog by Dr. Ves Dimov.

In this post, Dr. Ves Dimov (who has a great blog in medicine) makes us discover a way to easily read Twitter updates without even following the people via Google Reader. Dr. Ves Dimov explains how this approach makes it easier for him to manage multiple information streams. Plus, Google Reader is web-based and can be accessed from any devide with an interent connection. (Follow Dr. Ves Dimov on twitter)

• How to make and maintain a Library Twitter account on DigiCMB by Guus Van Den Brekel

Guus shows in this example of a new twitter account how to fine tune parameters to receive all the possible interesting updates and twitts right into your twitter account. This tutorial will definitely take you to the best practices in terms of interconnection and follow up! (Follow DigiCMB on twitter)

• Allergy Notes: If you think blogs don’t matter, think again: this blog is the number one search result for “allergic rhinitis guidelines” on Allergy News Updated Daily Blog Dr. Ves Dimov.

Interesting reflexion by Dr. Ves Dimov on the role of blogs when looking for information online through search engines. From the example “allergic rhinitis guidelines” which is the first result on Google, and a blog post -hence listed before NEJM- he shares with us his vision of the future of search results. Blogs and fresh content can play a significant role but better quality source should always be sought for. (Follow Dr. Ves Dimov on twitter)

• A review of the main reference management softwares on Knowledge beyond words by Valentin.

Through a detailed post, we describe the main citation managers available out there and their particularity. You should consult this article if you are to decide what is the citation managers most adapted to your needs and uses. There is also the results of a poll launched on twitter asking people what is their favorite citation manager. (Follow novoseek on twitter)

Thank you for reading this MedLib’s Round on Knowledge beyond words. We’d like to help spread Jacqueline’s message who is looking for ideas for a logo and a new name for the MedLib’s Round which is according to Berci, one of the important things of a blog carnival. So feel free to submit her your ideas, it will be much appreciated.

Feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed of MedLib’s Round Blog Carnival. Next MedLib’s Round will be published next January 5th on Dr. Shock’s blog and you can already submit your materials via this form.

The MedLib’s round is a monthly blog carnival which tends to show every month the best of the blogposts in the field of medical librarianship. We have been following the past rounds with great interest and even took part in some of them. Obviously, it allows to read and have a comprehensive view of the actuality in that field each month.

Last month, the MedLib Round was hosted by Walter Jessen from Highlight Health and dealt with subjects such as biomedical research, web2.0 tools, Pubmed redesign or the use of social medias for health.

Next round is hosted here on Knowledge beyond words. For this MedLib Round 1.9, we do not specify a theme to deal with as we’d like to encourage you to post your writings here.

Edit:MedLib’s Round is reported to December 13th.


Please submit your article before December 5th through this form and remember to come back read us soon. The MedLib’s Round 1.9 should be available on December 8th.

credit photograph

• 10 things your hospital won’t tell you on msn moneycentral

Ten things you may not know about hospitals and why -according to the article- you should avoid hospitals in July…Big thrill!

• How Stephan Hawking became the sage of science on usatoday by Dan Vergano

A nice review of Stephan Hawking work, discoveries and myth’s building after he visited the hospital and provoked worries among the scientists community

• Regulatin’ Genes on Youtube.

New Hip Hop outsiders or just some stylish biology students gone wild? This “rap video” teaches you a lot about genes

• Science radio for scientists on Ouroboros

A great initiative from Chris Patil to know some main science radios and podcasts you should listen to stay informed on the news. Your participation is more than welcome to make that list richer with your favorites’!

• 25 excellent social media sites for your health on nursing assistant guides

This exhaustive listing will help you know more about the health social medias you have to discover. Just pick yours.

• Social media monitoring can help pharma get smarter on Pharmastrategy Blog

A blog post by Sally Church -a medical specialist consultant- where she states the advantages a pharma firm can take from following what’s being said about them on social medias. Interestingly, she shows how “mere” market studies and insights are sometimes just not enough.

• Open Access: promises and challenges of scholarship in the digital age on Academic Matters

An extensive thought by Leslie Chan for knowing everything about Open Access and what the Digital Age has made possible.

• Social media threats hyped by science reporting, not science on Ars Technica

An inventory of the reasons why social media have been criticized the past weeks based on the very beginning of the story.

• Scientists warn of Twitter dangers on CNN Technology

Is twitter stream of information too fast for the human brain to understand and process it?

• Is this science? on Vonahn blog

A post by Luis Von Ahn where he raises conscience on which studies are actually science and the debate this can trigger.

• Eye on Pi on Fisheye Perspective

A blog post on the Pi number to celebrate the Pi Day on March 14th. The post deals with the history of Pi and proposes some useful and funny Pi-related resources.

• Defining the Journalism vs Blogging debate, with a science reporting angle on A blog around the clock

A brilliant blog post where Bora explains his views on blogging (contemplating the Twitter use for breaking news), the main differences with journalism as we know it and much more. The post is quite extensive and complete so you have to dedicate it a while to read it all, but it’s worth it.

• All you ever wanted to know about the belly button lint on Neurotopia

The title is explicit enough to let you guess what it is about. Funny enough to be pointed out, the post is classified in the “Friday Weird Science” category.

• Map of science looks like Milky Way on Wired Science

A comprehensive yet impressive map from Los Alamos National Laboratory trying to show the fields in science. This map has been a bit of a controversial’s but still is helpful when identifying bounded disciplines.

• 370 Scientific Twitter Friends on Sciencebase Science Blog

And counting, I would say. What started like the 100 scientwists in January has increased considerably. This resourceful article will help you identify scientific people on Twitter and will allow you to be added to the list, as long as you leave a comment asking so.