Pablo and all the team from novoseek wish you the best for 2010 with the video below . We hope that watching it will delight you as much as preparing, filming and broadcasting did to us. Enjoy!

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.

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I could have told you about the BioTechnica in Hannover last week in a traditional blogpost (which indeed I did as you can see below), but I prefer to sum it up in 10 words:

1. Huge

The show area is composed of 26 different halls. Hopefully the Biotechnica just occupied 2 of them. You’d better follow the signs in order not to get lost.

2. B32

The exact position of our booth, to be remembered in such a huge complex.

3. Green

The booth color, which actually helped make a difference.

4. Skilled

The people that came visit us, they were either professionals or students who are already used to biomedical online search.

5. Motivating

The feedback we received from them and the ideas they could suggest us.

6. Free

The answer we had to give everytime we were asked “How much does novoseek cost? “.

7. 400

The number of promotionnal items we have been giving away to visitors.

8. 5 hours

The maximum time one can stand without sitting, and it hurts afterward.

9. BioMatters

The name of the company we had next to our booth and we enjoyed speaking with.

10. Seven

The number of beers I managed to drink during those 4 days (“C’mon! I was in Germany“)

If you follow us on twitter or facebook, you may have noticed that we were out at the Biotechnica last week. What’s the Biotechnica? Simply the biggest European show in the field of biotechnologies that takes place yearly in Hannover (Germany).

Obviously, you understand how important it is for us to be there, as we did for major shows in the United States during the year 2009. The importance of the show, the people and companies attending it, its growing influence have made that Bioalma,Spanish -and therefore European- company took the opportunity to go meet professionals, prospects and users from the old continent.

What have we been doing there? Principally meet people and explain them what is novoseek and explain them why it is a great tool. Obviously, some of them would already know novoseek and ask very specific questions.

Nevertheless, one of the main question we were asked, the detail that triggered people’s curiosity is knowing what has to be paid for in novoseek. The answer left them even more surprised as novoseek is a free biomedical search engine. “Free, you have just said? So how do you guys make money?” Well, we make money out of advertisement displayed here and there across the pages on one hand. And thanks to companies announcing via our media platform.

Naturally, we had some time for dinners & bears to follow up with colleagues, users and providers. Its great to be able from time to time to see the faces of people with whom you exchange e-mails, phone calls, twitts…