Following Facebook

Millions of teenagers and I have something in common.  My mother is on Facebook.  I never thought the day would come, and quite frankly I never pushed her because I didn’t think she would be interested.  But my mom joined.  For her it is all one sided.  She is a lurker, she doesn’t say that specifically but she told me she just really joined so she could follow my siblings and I and our cousins in our day to day musings and family photos. 

Facebook is becoming more pervasive and more and more people are joining.  MLA now has an official MLA Facebook pageand a lot of hospitals are using Facebook to do outreach.  If you haven’t noticed it, local news channels are using Facebook as well as other established companies.  On a personal note I have noticed more people finding me on Facebook too….. including my mom.

So I have begun to separate my librarian life from my personal life on Facebook just a little bit more.  Just like email, I now have a professional account and a personal account.  In the following weeks I will be doing more of my professional librarian type stuff on my Facebook Fan Page http://www.facebook.com/KraftyLibrarian. I will also begin to weed my personal page.  I know Scott Plutchak has mentioned a few times that he doesn’t really consider himself to be segmented into a personal life and work life, that they all are a part of his life and make up who he is.  I agree with that, my kids, my husband, my hobbies as well as librarianship all go into making me who I am.  However, I find that for my sanity, it is easier for me to have two somewhat different social networking lives/personas.  My family and close friends (non librarians) are not as interested in PubMed, MeSH, the user experience, NLM, and MLA as I am.  Likewise I am sure there are many librarians who I am friends with who are way more interested in the librarianship stuff rather than my family trip to St. Louis, my kids’ fascination with Guitar Hero songs, and what SciFi movie I just saw.  I kind of look at Facebook as simplified telephone, I am not going to talk about the finer points of searching MEDLINE using both Ovid and PubMed with my brother.  Likewise I am not going to talk about how the 104 degree heat plus a well place pebble on the highway required me to replace the windshield on my brand new car.  That is not to say there won’t be any cross over.  Au contraire, just like Scott said, all these pieces are who I am, and they lend a bit of flavor to the story or message I am trying to convey.  However, the primary topic on those sites will be more specific.

So I want to let everybody know that in the next few weeks my personal Facebook site will no longer be sending out library related news and it will be more personal in nature.  Fair warning I will also be “un-friending” some people.  It is nothing personal, if I do it to you it is just because I thought you were more interested in library stuff rather than how much cooler and bigger the Magic House in St. Louis has gotten since I was a kid.  If you want to still remain on my personal site, drop me a note.  If you would rather follow me professionally, don’t forget to go to my fan page and become a Fan.

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Blogging Vacation

I will be taking a vacation from blogging and all other online things. I will be back with the wired world next Monday.

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DOCLINE Changes

Yesterday I received an email from our DOCLINE coordinator at the NN/LM GMR indicating that DOCLINE will soon move to version 4.5.  Why is  this important?

Well if you are one of the libraries still using Internet Explorer 6.0 you might have problems.  According to the GMR 20% of the Greater Midwest Region libraries are still using Internet Explorer 6.0 which is NOT supported. 

Since it is not supported, who knows how Explorer 6.0 will react to the new version of DOCLINE.  One way to help ensure you don’t have browser problems is to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.0 or 8.0 or use Firefox 3.x.  The new version of DOCLINE will work and function fully on these browsers. 

For more information about the upgrade and system requirements:

System Requirements
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/docline/system_requirements.html#system

Browser Settings
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/docline/system_requirements.html#browser

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What Smart Phone is Winning Over the Doctors?

Question: 100 doctors surveyed, name the smart phone most preferred by doctors.

Survey Says…. The iPhone.

In an article on cnet news, Gregg Malkary, managing director of Spyglass Consulting Group, states “Physicians are showing a clear preference (almost double) for using the Apple iPhone (44 percent) over the RIM BlackBerry (25 percent).”  Now that seems like a lot and pretty impressive numbers especially when you pair it with the statment from the Spyglass marketing survey, ”Ninety-four percent of physicians interviewed were using smart phones to communicate, manage personal/business work flows, and access information including medical reference materials.”  Unfortunatley according to HDM Breaking news, Spyglass only surveyed 100 doctors.

(Please note I usually read the full report of things I quote but I do not have the obscene amount of money ($2500) to purchase the full report, so I am just going with their abstract about their full report.  This is out of character for me, so if you take issue with this, I apologize and feel free to criticize or even ignore this post.)

Personally for a report of this nature and especially this price, I would have expected it to be way more extensive surveying way more than 100 doctors.  I could survey 100 docs on my lunch break and get similar results.  Just observing people at work I have seen more and more physicians carrying iPhones.  I see a lot of people carrying Blackberries too.  But I think that is because the Blackberry is supported by the institution and the iPhone is still considered “an attractive consumer device, which, at present, does not meet enterprise standards for stability, dependability and security.” 

Two interesting things I have seen are doctors carrying two smartphone devices, and doctors who have dumped their iPhone for an iPad and carry their institutionally approved Blackberry.  (I haven’t seen a lot who have dumped the iPhone but I have talked to a few and it is a curious development.) 

The problem with this report is that I so want to use their statement, ”Physicians interviewed report they are overwhelmed by the daily volume of communications received from colleagues, care team members, and patients.  They lack automated tools to manage voice mail, pager messages, SMS messages, and electronic mail.  They are forced to continually check separate data silos and manually filter and prioritize communications based upon sender, subject and priority.  Critical communications easily fall through the cracks. ”  But when they only look at 100 docs it is hard to make that kind of sweeping judgement even though I perceive it to be true based on my observations, anecdotes, and reading other blogs and emails.  There are very few hospital IT departments as enlightened as John Halamka’s  or Dr. Henry Feldman‘s hospitals and institutions and I do believe there is a problem with information silos when you look at institutions and communication devices.

As much as I want to like this report and want to jump up and down to the powers that be that iPhones are important in healthcare, this report won’t cut it.  So what as librarians should we do?  Well can keep looking for quality information about the usage of mobile devices and pass along (if possible) the credible stuff to the powers that be.  It is also important to make sure that we try to think about library resources and how they work on the popular devices in healthcare.  We should keep our eyes open for resources that aren’t app dependent and run mobile friendly web pages (like MedlinePlus), because these resources can be used by almost any smart phone. 

Right now it is kind of a loosey goosey kind of time period for smart phones.  There are very few quality sites that review medical apps for healthcare professionals.  iTunes, Blackberry App World, and the Android Market quite frankly stink at organizing and providing information on quality apps for medical professional.  Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, are just as crummy on organizing medical ebooks for healthcare professionals and it appears Mathews hasn’t really dipped their toes very far into the pool and are primarily set up for institutions (leaving individuals out of the loop).  So we have to find and rely upon sites like Software Advice Medical Blog, iMedicalApps.com, Skyscape and UnboundMedicineas places to find ebooks or apps.  While Skyscape and UnboundMedicine made names for themselves in the PDA market, many of the other sites are new and requires us to do a little outside of the box searching and thinking. 

Smartphones aren’t going away, people are using them more and more, medical professionals included, it doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with them and to keep your ears and eyes open as new things and resources pop up.

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NEJM Changes

The New England Journal of Medicine launched its new website which is now hosted on the Atypon publish Platform, they will be moving off of the Highwire platform. 

If you have an institutional subscription, your subscription administrator should have received an email but just in case, here is what you need to know.

Contact NEJM right away if:

Other Key Information You Should Know:

• Changes to administrator’s username/password -You will be asked to choose an email address as your username
• No more multiple users of one username/password
• The URL http://www.nejm.org will stay the same, there will be redirects to the new site.  The URL http://content.nejm.orgwill no longer be correct but there will be redirects for it.  The DOI for content will not change
• IP addresses, Athens IDs, and Shibboleth will be migrated to the new site. 
• COUNTER reports back to 2005 will be available.  COUNTER reports through HighWire will NOT be available.  The new site supports SUSHI.

NEJM Subscription and Content Information:

• The two institution subscription options; Site License option (unlimited IP addresses, Athens and/or Shibboleth), the Print plus 5 works stations option (five static IP addresses & no proxy/remote access) will remain the same.
• Now that NEJM is on Atypon, the complete NEJM Archive is available for purchase. One or both sections of the Archive (1812-1944 and/or 1945-1989) are availble to purchase.  Individual subscribers will have limited online access to the Archive.
• All subscribers (institutional and individual) will automatically have online access to 1990-Present for no additional charge.
• Reference linking will be available for content from 1945 -Present but there will no longer be “toll-free” reference linking that was part of the Highwire platform.
• Increased opportunities for institutional branding (graphics 50×24 pixels; jpeg, gif, or png, and text 60 chars.)

If you have any questions about these changes contact NEJM and allow 24-72 hours for them to respond.

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Friday Fun: Panera Co. Pay What You Wish

For my Friday Fun’s I usually try to loosely stick to the topic of libraries or technology, but sometimes other things pop up that I find interesting and want to share and a Friday post is a good time. 

My mom called me the other day to tell me that she was just at Saint Louis Bread Co. and the location participated in plan that was called a pay what you wish.  (For all of you non-native St. Louisians, Saint Louis Bread Co. is actually Panera Bread Co. and its test kitchens along with their headquarters are located in the St. Louis area.)  Apparently, Panera Co decided to open a nonprofit restaurant in Clayton, MO (well to do inner ring suburb of St. Louis) that operated on the honor system.  As the cashier rang up the order they would say something like, the suggested price is $X but you can pay what you wish. 

At first blush you would think that the restaurant would be out of food in hours and would be broke within days, but that isn’t what happended.  According an Associated Press article(thanks Mom for the article) most people are pretty honest, about 60%-70% pay in full the suggested (menu price) about 15% pay a little more, about 15% play less or nothing, and a handful of people leave big donations. 

The community restaurant is successful enough that Panera Cares (their nonprofit arm of the company) plans expand the concept around the nation and will be opening two more locations within months. 

Kind of a nice happy story to start off the weekend.

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Medical Apps

Looking for some good medical apps for the Android?  The MidContinental Regional News clued me into a nice list on the Software Advice Medical Blog.  As a result of publishing their best iPhone medical apps the folks over at Software Advice had a lot of requests for a follow up post highlighting medical apps for the Android.  So they whittled down the “over 1,200 ‘Health’ apps in the Android Market place to 18 categories and 60 apps designed for doctors, nurses and students.”  They specifically chose apps for medical professionals and chose not to list ones directed at consumers. 

Check out the site and the list, if you have an Android.  They welcome any suggestions in the comments section.  They will update the list if they see a good app that they missed. 

On a similar note:  Medical librarians have you done a lot of work looking at evaluating and helping medical professionals choose medical apps for their devices?  If so you, are you interested in writing about it?  If the answer is yes to both questions then you should check out the most recent call for contributors from iMedicalApps.  According to their post, “iMedicalApps.com is growing rapidly – and we want more for the medical community to participate.  If you’re a healthcare provider or student in healthcare, and interested in mobile technology we’d love for you apply.”  They are currently looking for two more staff writers and people willing to guest posts as well.  Not only are they looking for people who have interests in the Android, Blackberry and Palm but they are interested in other healthcare provider professionals besides doctors. 

Medical librarians are already great at doing database reviews on medical resources, medical apps are right up the same alley.

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Medline Plus Redesign Webinar

The NN/LM SCR’s monthly webinar will be “Review of the MedlinePlus Redesign.”  The webinar session will be Wednesday July 21, 2010 from 10:30-11:30am CDT.  The webinar is free, for more information on how to login go to http://nnlm.gov/scr/training/webmeeting.html

Sorry for my late notice about this webinar, but if you are busy and just can’t make it don’t worry, they post the archives of their webinars for people to view at their convenience.  They have past webinars dating back to November 2008, so if this topic isn’t up your alley, I bet they have something else that you might be interested in.

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Friday Fun: Libraries With a Little Old Spice and New Spice

If you have not seen Old Spice guy commericals you must be living in a cave without Internet or TV.  Since you are reading this post, I assume you have ventured out of your subterranean dwelling and I recommend watching a few of them for laughs. 

The Old Spice guy and his commercials are prime example of something going viral on the Internet.  The Old Spice guy has both a Facebook page and a Twitter account, but its not the fact that he has them it is the way he (and Old Spice) use them that has taken their popular Super Bowl Commercial which was hugely popular and taken it to another level that has people buzzing, interacting, and creating parodies.  

Earlier this week Old Spice guy went on his Twitter page and Facebook page soliciting and answering questions via custom video (all while in a towel from his bathroom) from almost anybody who posted.  Everything from, “If you went back in time how do you think a dinosaur would react to the manly scent of Old Spice?”  to marriage proposals, and even a shout out to Andy Woodworth (@wawoodworth)  about libraries. Wawoodworth Public Library.  Frankly the Old Spice guy gets my admiration for just saying wawoodworth several times without tripping over his tongue.

You would think the wawoodworth Public library shout out is all that I have related to libraries and the Old Spice guy, but you would be wrong.  Yesterday the librarian Twitterverse alerted me to a hilarious spoof of the Old Spice guy’s commercials by Harold B. Lee Library at Bringham Young University.  In it “New Spice” guy asks “Do you want to be a scholar? Then study at the Harold B. Lee Library. Do your research here, study here, and be a scholar!” 

Wow they knocked it out of the park, true to the original commercials with clothes flying off, walls falling down, and things dropping from the sky this was an extremely well done parody.  I think if the Old Spice guy were still commenting via custom video he would say “Well done Harold B. Lee Library, well done.”

Buisness, advertising and social media pundits are all talking about how great a campaign this has been and how well Old Spice leveraged social media tools to get brand recognition and people talking about their product.  Now we all can’t have the Old Spice marketing agency  Wieden + Kennedy to come up with advertisements for us, nor do many of us have the creativity and the skills to do a great parody like Harold B. Lee Library.  But there is something we can learn about this campaign.  Check out the Huffington Post’s article, What Political Campaigns and Candidates Can Learn from the Old Spice Campaign, while it is intended for politics, librarians can learn a lot from it too. 

It is not just about being on Twitter and Facebook, it is what you do with it.

*note thanks to Abigail who cleared up my confusion about wawoodworth. I have made edits in the above text to fix the error.

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MedlinePlus Mobile Review and Social Medicine

MedlinePlus has updated the look and feel to their website and I have decided to try and test out their mobile version. My earlier worry that the mobile site link was at the bottom of the page is frustratingly accurate. NLM does not have any way to recognize that you are using a mobile device so you are automatically directed to the full Internet site where you have to scroll to and enlarge to click on the tiny link to the mobile site at the bottom of the page.
Mobile web devices are not new, more and more people are using their phones to access the web. As Susanna Fox mentions in her post, Mobile, Social Health at the National Library of Medicine, “84% of 18-29 year olds no go online wirelessly. and 20% of wireless Internet users go online exclusively on a cell phone.” That is a big chunk of people and my unofficial guess is those numbers aren’t shrinking.
So for any people designing web pages that might be used on mobile browsers, please put the mobile link at the top of the of the full page AND put the link for the full Internet site at the top of the mobile page.  Both of these links are extremely important to mobile web users and SHOULD NOT be at the bottom of the page.

I looked at the mobile site while also looking at the full website on my computer.  The reason I did this was I wanted to see what was on the mobile site and what wasn’t.  Due to screen space, scrolling, and other things, a mobile site should never be an exact duplicate of the full site.  Some things do better on the mobile and some things do better on the full site (hence the reason we need the links to switch back and forth between the two sometimes). 

Overall the mobile site is a nice scaled down version of the full site.  The mobile site does a great job in providing access to the top three things that I believe a mobile user would need/want from MedlinePlus, Search Box, Health Topics and Drugs.  Topics are displayed nicely in the mobile form and images are downsized as thumbnails.  Clicking on images the gives a bigger (but not too big for the screen) image. 

The one downer is that none of videos or interactive tutorials on MedlinePlus are available on the mobile platform.  Why?  Because they are in Flash.  Flash does not work on mobile phones and will never (if Steve Jobs has his way) be on the iPhone which is one of the most popular devices.  I think the videos are extremely helpful to people who want to know more about their disease, surgery, or anatomy.  It is too bad they don’t have them prominently on YouTube. 

So why is the mobile web thing so important anyway for a clearly established public health medical site like NLM anyway?  Well what do you think people do in the waiting room, in the doctor’s office or in the ER when they are waiting to see the doctor?  They aren’t reading last year’s issue of Field and Stream.  If they have a phone that they can surf the Internet they are surfing the Internet looking up information.  Example:  A few months ago we were in the ER with one of my sons for an injury that was serious enough for the ER but not life or death.  The ER is busy, it is a lot of hurry up and wait.  You see the doctor and they answer your questions at the time, then they leave to take care of other patients.  Often it is during these long times between the doctor or nurse poking their head in that you begin to think of other questions and want to know more about what the doctor said.  So, I whipped out my iPhone and started surfing looking for information. 

As EagleDawg and Susanna both mentioned, NLM is starting to get more than just their toes into social media,  (I think they now have maybe one foot in the water) but they still have a long way to go with a lot of opportunities.  Social media is one way to reach out to people interested in public health information.  Many people have reported how poor iTunes and other sites are at organizing medical podcasts and apps.  Amazon.com is just as bad at organizing medical texts for the Kindel.  There are very few authorative entities taking an active role in collecting, organizing, promoting, and vetting medical and public health in social media.  Perhaps it is because I am a librarian but this seems like an area that is right up the alley of something like the NIH and the National Library of Medicine.  Not only organizing and vetting said information but also releasing and spreading medical information.  Fox says in her post about NLM,

“Two-thirds of those who look online for health information usually talk about it with someone else. The Pew Internet Project will focus on research questions about the who, what, where & when of  those health conversations in an upcoming survey. But the questions are pertinent to the NLM’s mission, too: What are people saying? Is the NLM helping to seed the conversation? How are you (NLM) contributing to the spread of facts, the spread of science, the spread of evidence?”

“Behavior – both good and bad – can be catching. How can the NLM seed conversations happening online and offline, to spread good information and good behaviors?”

The mobile web is just one part of social medicine.  NLM has done a fairly good job with MedlinePlus mobile, but that is just one small piece of the larger pie.

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