What Would You Like to See Here?
I am in the process of evaluating my blog (an ongoing thing) and I realized that I have always been posting information that I thought was interesting to people in the medical library world. That got me thinking. Am I really in touch with my audience and providing information that they find interesting and informative? I realize I can not satisfy everybody, but I am curious what you all would like to see in a medical library blog.
One way to find out is to ask.
Am I covering things that you find interesting?
Is there something that you would like to see on this blog that I am not doing/covering?
Drop me a line (comment) if there is you have any ideas or if there is something you think I should spend more time on.
8 Comments:
I facilitate blogging workshops (how to blog) from our local public library in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Personally, I'm not overly keen on medical library info, however, your writing style is fantastic, and your blog is straight-forward and well put together. Furthermore, you update on a regular basis, which counts for A LOT in my books. I bring your site up in the classroom as an example frequently. Keep it up. As far as content goes...just keep writing the things you enjoy writing, as that's where the best content comes from - the heart.
This is your blog. For it to be successful long term, you need to enjoy doing it. As such, put what you want in it. That is my philosophy at the Information Literacy Land of Confusion and I am sticking with it.
I certainly find your posts interesting (even all that medical stuff I do not normally deal with) and I am sure others do too. Just keep up the good work.
Holy cow, Krafty! Your great blog allowed me to kill my original blog--because you were doing the "news medical librarians can use" thing so much better than I was. Your feed is one I always read, so I say keep up the good work.
I thought on the subtitle of my blog some days before. It's a dry "Informations from library, medicine and press" but what I really want is something like an evangelistic "Everything a medical librarian should know about". But the problem is that nobody can make a claim to be exhaustive. Therefore I'm happy that you cover things in depth which I would like to comment on but I'm to busy to. Personally I like the idea of various blogs creating a network and supporting each other. In this regard I appreciate your fresh view from an OPL small kind of hospital library, which is sometimes remarkable similiar to my big medical school library.
Well, first of all a huge thank you for creating and maintaining your blog. I discovered it a few months ago and have benefited immensely from it by learning about medical podcasts (your postings on that subject alone are a great service to the medical library world) and about the use of PDAs and other technologies in medical settings.
I read many library blogs and I would rank yours, UBC Google Scholar Blog, and Library Stuff as among the most useful and beneficial to the medical library world. So many of the supposedly tech-related blogs are simply platforms for the self-appointed leaders of the whole Library 2.0 movement, which is just a tool for self-promotion of an ego-driven, you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours cabal. Who is against technology, so who needs such tedious, tiresome, useless debates? What we need are alerts about tools such as your blog, Library Stuff and UBC Google Scholar Blog provide. Yours in particular provides real meat for medical librarians. I joined the Medical Library Association last summer and find its journal very useful. But its Web offerings are shockingly meager. That is why your blog is so very, very useful and important.
Now, what would I like to see? You have added the RSS button—good move, as that has enabled me (and, I am sure, others) to create email alerts of postings on your blog. I forward the email alerts to others in my hospital almost daily--you provide items that benefit those in the fields of continuing medical education, health careers training, information services and, of course, other librarians. Here is what I would like to see on your blog:
1) On your blogroll, I would like to see a list of blogs maintained by medical librarians (as opposed to those maintained by librarians in fields other than the medical). Yours and UBC Google Scholar Blog are the only medical-library specific blogs that I know of. I have learned so very much from those two blogs that I would like to learn what other medical-librarian operated blogs are out there.
2) Much more on search tools and techniques for medical librarians. What new search engines are out there that medical librarians should know about? What new features of well-known search engines are there that would benefit medical librarians?
3) More coverage of Web 2.0 tools that medical librarians can immediately experiment with or adopt. The Library 2.0 crowd pontificates a lot, but it really comes down to Library Stuff to provide hard-headed analysis of what is of real promise and value and links to those tools that are of potential value to those in the library community. The Library 2.0 movement is hot air by comparison to the outstanding contributions of you, Dean Giustini UBC Google Scholar blogger and Steven M. Cohen of Library Stuff to the everyday betterment of librarians.
4) More links to articles about hardware and software tools and blogs. The links in your postings to other blogs or articles are helpful. I might suggest not providing links to newspaper articles that require registration after the second viewing. It is frustrating to tell another librarian about a link to a daily newspaper story only to discover that what was once freely accessible now requires registration—too much trouble to register for a paper in Texas simply to view one story once, for instance.
5) Less about general news stories about medical research issues. We can hear about such things on the radio. What you excel at is alerting us medical librarians to new technologies, such as the growing importance of medical podcasts.
To sum up, more about the nuts and bolts of medical searching and Web 2.0 tools would be helpful as well as providing whatever you can find out about other medical library-related blogs would be much appreciated. I agree with Canadian Mark—you update frequently. I am always delighted when I see in my email inbox that there is a posting by you and I check for new postings by you daily. Keep up the good work!
Hope
Don't go changing.
Love to see even more opinion on decision support systems/evidence based medicine resources as these were especially useful/detailed when you have covered them.
Keep up the great work, it IS appreciated.
David is so right--it IS apprecaited!
Hope
Have you heard of or had a chance to check out MedEdPORTAL? I'm curious as to your thoughts on this system.
The AAMC is asking for your assistance as we test the newest version of MedEdPORTAL www.aamc.org/mededportal a system through which medical
educators can publish, share, and discover peer-reviewed educational
materials. There are currently over 250 indexed and discoverable
resources available in MedEdPORTAL.
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