Until recently I have not given much thought about going back to school to get a second graduate degree or even a Ph.D. It was just too expensive for somebody who is still paying off "his and hers" student loans, has two kids, and has the rest of life's expenses. However things have changed, my employer's tuition reimbursement plan has made it so that it might be financially possible for me to go back to school. I am wondering, is it worth getting a second masters degree or a Ph.D.? It is no secret that some day I would like to become a library director. I realize a second masters degree or Ph.D. won't get me that library director position, but will not having it shut me out of some potential positions?

I realize this a fairly hot topic for debate within the academic library world. When I was going to library school the hot topic of conversation among library students was the about whether a second masters degree or a Ph.D. in a subject specialty was a perceived or real need. Not only were single master students (those who would just have a masters in library science) and dual masters students discussing the pros and cons about it, but both students found that the salary (often in low to mid 30's) did not match that value of dual advance degree.

There are many successful single masters degree librarians out there, many in the medical library world. So I don't think having one masters degree specifically limits your success, but does it limit you in your career advancement? Notice, success and advancement are not the same? (That is not a coincidence, one does not always beget the other.)

The article "Subject Experts Need Not Apply: Recent job postings and hires suggest that many academic libraries are losing interest in hiring humanities Ph.D.'s," in The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 1, 2008) by Todd Gilman implies the trend to hire librarians with subject specialty masters degrees or Ph.D.'s is lessening. "Many recent job postings for humanities librarians, reference librarians, or those specializing in research education do not list subject expertise as a requirement. In place of subject expertise, those job postings require relevant library experience (variously defined) and, more often than not, technology skills, neither of which, to my mind, makes up for a lack of advanced education in a particular discipline." Gilman, the librarian for literature in English at Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, thinks libraries need advanced degree subject specialists because they can better serve the subject collection and they can be seen as "true partners in education" because they are "players in the same intellectual ballpark as professors."
Gilman is a librarian in the humanities, he is not a biomedical librarian. It is a rare occasion you find an M.D. who decided to get an MLS and become a librarian. Slightly less rare are the R.N.'s who are now librarians. There are quite a few librarians who have advanced degrees in the sciences (biology, chemistry, etc.) and even more that have undergraduate degrees in those subject. There are many successful medical librarians who have undergraduate degrees in non-science subjects and who don't hold any advanced degrees. What can an advanced degree do for the current medical librarian?

In May at MLA's Not-so Dangerous Liaisons: Best Practices for Library Liaison Work symposium I sat across from the speaker, Patrick McCarthy the Director of Saint Louis University Medical Center Library. He described the medical library's liaison librarians. These librarians are subject specialist medical librarians, their library jobs were their second career. He described a shift in his library and institution to hire medical librarians with advanced degrees in biomedical subjects. Their library website says, "The Medical Center Library's Liaison Program links our reference subject specialists with each health sciences department and program. The purpose of this program is to foster communication in research, teaching, and clinical care between the Library and the Schools it serves." At MLA McCarthy said this liaison program increased faculty involvement in the medical library. Is this the way things are now moving in medical libraries? I quickly looked at both Harvard and Yale's medical library websites, each list their library staff just like Saint Louis University. Neither Harvard nor Yale included any initials after the library staff names (unlike SLU) so it was difficult to determine at a glance if these big academic medical libraries are doing this as well.

So, I am still left with the question regarding advanced degrees and librarians. Is getting a second masters degree worth it? Does it help get a foot in the door for an interview and once you land the library job, does it pay for itself? At MLA McCarthy answered this a similar question. He said that his library increased salaries for those librarians with advanced degrees which in fact lured a few librarians away from a competing university. But is this the norm? Will having a second masters degree or a Ph.D. help towards getting a library director position? Are there director positions out there that require an advance degree as one of the job requirements or is that more of a "preferred" qualification allowing otherwise qualified candidates to have an equal shot at the position?

Labels: ContinuingEducation

The video from yesterday's PubMed Search Clinic is now available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/clinics/pmupdate08.html so if you missed it you can still learn about the changes.

The presentation covers the changes made to PubMed including: automatic term mapping, citation sensor, and advanced search page.

Citation Senor:
It is a new feature designed for users seeking specific citations. Simply put the citation information into the search box and click Go. The Citation Sensor looks at that information and if it looks like it is citation information it will try and find matches. It will display the matches in a yellow box.

I see this as handy, but I have to say I really like the regular Citation Matcher that is listed on the left hand side (in the blue bar) of the front page. I like it because quite often people have the wrong spelling, wrong journal, wrong year when looking for a specific citation. I think the Citation Matcher makes it easier to account and adjust for these errors. For example, it suggests author and journal titles. There are a lot of ways to misspell Tchorzewski, however if you are close and at least type in Tch, PubMed will at least suggest the rest. You don't get that with Citation Sensor. But who knows maybe Citation Sensor will grow on me.

Automatic Term Mapping (ATM):
PubMed has had automatic term mapping for quite a while, they just have made some recent changes. The old ATM mapped search terms to subject, journal, and author tables in a certain order. If a match was found in the MeSH table it would stop mapping, it wouldn't search the author or journal tables. According to NLM this was frustrating to users. The new ATM still does check the original fields (subject, journal, author) in the same order but it also now checks all fields for phrase and individual terms.

July 2, 2008 changes to ATM:
Based on user feedback, they made some enhancements to ATM. Substance names (known as MeSH supplement or concepts) and MeSH with stand alone letters or numbers will not be broken apart and searched. They will be searched as a phrase. For example: "factor b" will not be split up.

The new ATM changes mean that users will retrieve more results. They found that searches retrieved on average 10% more citations. NLM has provided an FAQ for more information and reasoning for the new ATM.

Personally, I still don't like PubMed's searching and mapping features. I really really like the way Ovid maps and suggests terms. It almost forces keyword searchers to think about using MeSH terms. PubMed doesn't do that, people enter terms and are blindly mapped to terms and keywords. Yes, they can click the Details tab to see what it is doing, but how many users do that? Getting PubMed to search MeSH terms is better than it has been in the past but I still think it is clunky.

Advanced Search:
The beta for Advanced Search was launched on May 15, 2008. The screen has four collapsable sections allowing you to shrink or expand various sections as needed. The search box and the History are at the top, History works the same as previously. The Search by Field section is next and the default fields displayed are Author, Journal, and Publication Date which are the most commonly searched. However, you can search by other fields as well. Just right of the search fields input box there is an odd little icon/button that gives you access to the index for the selected field. The Limit section is the next section on the page and you can carry your limits to future searches using the lock icon (defaulted to carry your limits to future searches). Finally, there is the Index of Fields and Field Values box. This feature is helpful if you want to add multiple items from one specific index.

If after viewing the clinic, you still have some general PubMed suggestions you should consider sending an email to their customer service which you can find on the bottom of most NLM pages as Write to the Help Desk. The instructors feel that the PubMed improvements have helped with searching. If it hasn't they want your feedback with real searches and real examples.

Labels: ContinuingEducation, Medline Database, NLM, PubMed

Nikki (Eagle Dawg Blog) has posted a guest post on David Rothman's site reminding us all about the 30 min. PubMed search clinic offered tomorrow July 17 at 2pm Eastern time.

Don't forget the class is only open to the first 300 participants to login. If you get shut out or you can't otherwise make it at that time, never fear, the session will be recorded and available for viewing at a later time.

Do you have questions for the search clinic? Unfortunately they will not be able to take questions using audio. Please use the Chat (Q&A) pod to type questions and comments to the trainers. Feel free to enter your questions throughout the presentation.

Nikki also reminds us of the technical requirements for participating in the class. "If you have not used Adobe Connect before (or since they acquired Macromedia Breeze), check that you have the most recent free Adobe Flash update (version 9.0.124) as using 9.0.115 and earlier versions may result in audio problems while accessing the archive later on. I recommend viewing the recent ‘Awakening the Searcher Within’ seminar series from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Northwest Region (NN/LM PNR) archive both as a way to test your audio and see how the chat pod is used in Adobe Connect in addition to reviewing some great search strategies."

Labels: ContinuingEducation, Medline Database, NLM, PubMed

There has been a lot of chatter recently regarding some of the changes in PubMed. While I have been kicking the tires and testing out CINAHL in EBSCO 2.0, others have been detailing some of the changes happening within PubMed. Now the National Library of Medicine will be conducting a 30 minute online search clinic on July 17, 2008 at 2:00 eastern regarding the PubMed changes. The presentation will cover how PubMed handles your search with the Automatic Term Mapping (ATM), Citation Sensor, and Advance Search beta.

For more information and access to the meeting, go to: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/clinics/pmupdate08.html.
Due to technical limitations, there is a maximum capacity of 300 participants.
The clinic will be recorded and available for viewing at this address. Comments and suggestions regarding the search clinic are welcome.

Personally I think this is a must see for medical librarians, but is especially important for medical librarians who rely primarily on PubMed for MEDLINE searching.

If you are interested in reading what others are saying about the changes Laika, Keith Nockels, and Eagle Dawg all have fairly recent posts on the new PubMed features. It might be a nice way to quickly familiarize yourself with the issues before NLM's presentation. Perhaps their insights might cause you to generate some interesting and thought provoking questions, comments, and suggestions that you would like to submit to NLM prior to the clinic on July, 17th.

In Laika's MedLibLog post, PubMed: Past, Present And Future, PART II she describes some of the changes and enhancements that NLM has implemented in the PubMed interface. She has a very in depth description and analysis of PubMed's "most recent, most radical, and yet most poorly announce change," Automatic Term Mapping (ATM). She illustrates her thoughts using several search examples and how PubMed handles them using ATM. She investigates new features such as the Citation Sensor, Advanced Search Beta, and some other minor changes.

She discusses the majority of changes in Part II of the series. Part I discusses past features and tools within PubMed and the need to make them easier. Part III discusses the possible future of PubMed and what she would like to see occur.

Keith Nockels over at Browsing posted, Changes to PubMed where he lists what changes he will discuss with the departments to which he is a liaison. He briefly discusses the missing sidebar, Advanced Search, ATM, Citation Sensor, Title Sort, and a new spellchecker.

Eagle Dawg's Blog post, New ATM & PubMed: Straight to the source is an update from her brief PubMed Review shoutout (MLA 08) which has a direct link to the 25-minute PubMed Review slides & audio presentation. She lists the three "must see" sections of the video as the Advanced Search Beta, ATM, and Using Advanced Search to focus subjects due to ATM. Eagle Dawg also provides al ink to NN/LM PNR's blog entry which is a brief tutorial on the changes.

Labels: ContinuingEducation, Medline Database, PubMed

I flew into Chicago yesterday. I got checked in and despite some confusion between the hotel staff and I about Internet access, I am up and blogging. Whoo hoo.

This morning I had the opportunity to take an interesting MLA Continuing Education class, Gaining Leadership Skills Without Formally Supervising People taught by Natalie Kay Reed.

This class focused on learning various leadership skills without formally supervising people. In other works you don't have to be a manager or a supervisor and we learned that leadership is not mutually exclusive to management. Just because you are a manager doesn't necessary mean that you are a leader. Just because you are a leader within a group doesn't mean that you are the supervisor or manager either.

Leadership focuses on achieving goals to make a change. Management focuses on control, organization, and order.

Within the class we learned that various organizations MLA, SLA, Management, etc. all have their core leadership skills. They are all very similar, but have their own slant tailored to the organization.

In the class we learned about the various leadership skills and discussed our experiences with leaders who used these skills. After the discussion we looked at the skills and wrote down which skills were important to us. Then we discussed our spheres of influence, in other words our personal and professional encounters in our daily lives. For example: my personal spheres of influence include my family, my swim team, school PTA, friends, etc. My professional spheres could be my job at the library, my state association, committee work, hospital work groups, etc. Then we looked at the leadership skills that we thought were important to us and began to look at we would use them within our spheres. We then created action plans as to how we could better develop our skills and continue learning and developing our leadership skills.

It was a very interesting class and I think the best part of it was listening to other participants thoughts and discussing the qualities and skills of leaders. It has inspired me to develop a few of these skills and grow a little bit more professionally and personally.

Labels: ContinuingEducation, Leadership, MLA2008