Krafty Librarian – Page 46 – Things of interest to a medical librarian.

Will Data Plans Squash the Cloud?

Today I noticed an stating Verizon will soon eliminate unlimited data plans. The article does have an update stating that they discovered a yet released screen shot of Verizon’s site stating that current customers will be grandfathered in with unlimited data plans. That is similar to what AT&T did.

However the smartphone market is growing. According to my mother (an avid dumb phone user) it is getting increasingly more difficult to find a plain dumb phone. I know mom’s situation isn’t exactly scientific, but the Technolog reports smartphone shipping in the fourth quarter of 2010 rose over 87% compared to fourth quarter 2009. Now I would never say my mom is wrong, but Technolog does, they say smartphones haven’t cannibalized dumb phones yet. However, mom’s experience trying to find a replacement dumb phone could be the canary in the cave. Because Technolog reports interest in dumb phone is lagging in some areas of the country. Now if you were a cell phone maker what type of phone are you going to make, the hot smartphone or the stagnet dumb phone?

Right at the time the smartphone market is growing, the two largest cell phone companies will have capped dataplans or high cost overage dataplans.

Enter the cloud. As David Pogue mentions in his blog post, everything now days is referred to as being “in the cloud” so much so that marketers and people are just using it refer to things being online. But as more and more people get tablet devices like the Google Chrome or the iPad where you can’t store things on the hard drive, the cloud begins to really emerge. In fact Apple’s iCloud is a free service that syncs your email, address book, calendar, bookmarks, photos, songs, etc. to all of your Apple devices using the cloud.

The cloud can be great but it requires Internet access and that is being actively throttled or capped by cell phone companies. But that is using 3G or cell networks to get your data. You can still hop on a wifi hotspot like at home and download data to your glutonous content. Oops not anymore, Pogue reports home data plans are starting to get capped. (I can attest to this, 4 months after we upped our home data plan and dumped Uverse for TV service but kept it for Internet, they are talkinga bout capping data to home data hogs.)

So if the trend in data providers is to cap our data, or make it outrageously expensive to download large amounts then how is the cloud supposed to continue to thrive. How is a a service like Apple’s iCloud full of all sorts of data heavy items like music, photos, movies, etc. going to work with a restrictor plate on?

Something to think about. Perhaps it is wishful thinking that we will all have to go to the library to access the cloud in the future. But the library doesn’t get its Internet for free either. Some institutions already have restrictor plates on the Internet, many hospitals prohibit video and multi media downloading to due to bandwidth issues. What will happen if academic and public libraries are forced to do the same?

RDA and You

So The Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, and the National Library of Medicine have issued a statement from the Executives of those three libraries regarding the Report and Recommendations of the U.S. RDA Test Coordinating Committee on the implementation of RDA—Resource Description & Access. The report is long, 192 PDF pages, but there is an executive summary for those librarians (like myself) who know they should know something about RDA.

The Coordingating Committee of the three libraries evaluated RDA to see whether it met certain goals.

Goals it met or partially met:

Provide a consistent, flexible and extensible framework for all types of resources and all types of content.
(Partially) Be compatible with itnernationally established principles and standards.
(Partially) Enable users to find, identify, select, and obtain resources appropriate to their information needs.
(Partially) Be compatible with descriptions and access points in existing catalogs and databases.
Be independent of the format, medium, or system used to store or communicate the data.

Goals it did not meet:

Be optimized for use as an online tool
Be written in plain English, and able to be used in other language communities
Be easy and efficient to use, both as a working tool and for training purposes.

Wow. Um the goals it didn’t meet are pretty important. Personally I think the partially met goal of enbling users to find, identify, select and obtain resources should have been classified as a failed to meet goal. Librarians are more tolerant of library things. Users are not. If it only partially meets this goal then it failed it. The Coordinating Committee says “User comments on RDA records indicate mixed reviews on how well new elements met user needs. The test did not fully verify all the user tasks above.” This tells me two things.

Mixed reviews equals a fail
They had a poor test(s) and didn’t test it appropriately.

First you need to come up with appropriate tests to verify ALL tasks and second you can’t have mixed user reviews. If it is mixed you have accomplished nothing, and users will find other ways to find their information. They don’t care that RDA is supposed to better than ~~MARC~~ AACR2 (sorry mistype that commenter caught).

The Coordinating Committee came up with many recommendations and timeframes to improve RDA so that it meets its goals. When they make the improvements I hope it does significantly better on its test, because the Committee’s Business case report said,

“The test revealed that there is little discernable immediate benefit in implementing RDA alone. The adoption of RDA will not result in significant cost savings in metadata creation. There will be inevitable and significant costs in training. Immediate economic benefit, however, cannot be the sole determining factor in the RDA buisness case. It must be determined if there are significant future enhancements to the metadata environment made possible by RDA and if those benefits, long term, outweigh implementation costs.”

Ok, that doesn’t sound good for RDA, right? Oh no, “it is, nevertheless, the decision of the Coordinating Committee to recommend implementing RDA.” Huh?! I know MARC is not working but is RDA the answer for MARC? Yet according to the Coordinating Committee, despite costs, no short term benefits, and yet to be determined long term benefits, RDA is the way the catalog is going. (No sooner than January 2013).

It is nice that these major libraries tested RDA, but these major libraries have lots more cataloging staff than the average library and certainly a lot more than the average solo librarian library. One of the major barriers to implementing RDA is not only training and easy to read English (or other language) documentation, but it is staffing. In this day and age where libraries are barely able to keep the number of FTEs they have, they don’t have catalogers are already swamped, what happens when they move to RDA? Budgets are shrinking so the cost of training may be prohibitive. So are you just going to sit them down with the Tool Kit and the hopefully improved easy language documenation? Small libraries are are going struggle, but think of solo librarian libraries. They are your cataloging department, reference department, circulation department, education department, and outreach all wrapped up in one person. I don’t see the transition going well for the solo librarian who must be a jack of all trades. Will it lead to more outsourcing of cataloging (at a price of course)? O r will there be some enterprising librarians who will “catalog” their collection their own way just so it is even accesible. Will librarians use something like LibraryThing for organizations to display their small non-circulating or lightly circulating collection to patrons

When faced with shrinking staff, libraries closing, and other cutbacks, is RDA what our organization should be focusing on? Think of our sales pitch to our funding organizations when there are no short term benefits and the long term ones have yet to be determined. I would think it would be more beneficial for us to focus more on high touch personalized services rather than a cataloging standard that failed some major goals.

Now I am not a cataloger, nor do I play one on TV, so perhaps I am totally missing something. If I am please comment and help me out because I would really like to learn. But I just don’t see how regular librarians in regular or small libraries are going to be able to deal with RDA at all and how RDA will help us in the long run. Are we just too hung up on MARC format and whatever we use AACR2 or RDA is just dealing with an antiquated format?

Sustainability Librarians Group

I don’t use my LinkedIn account as much as I probably should. I am sure I am missing out on something, but quite frankly it doesn’t draw and engage me like Facebook or Twitter. Who knows maybe a year from now I will be saying “Oh Facebook and Twitter those are soooo 2011. The new whatcha-madoodle plugin or enhancements have made LinkedIn my new must use tool.” But one of the things I like about LinkedIn are its discussion within groups. I get nice little emails informing me of a new post to the discussion. I can’t explain really why I like the discussion groups in LinkedIn and how I find them different than Facebook conversations. I just do.

I am signed up to multiple groups in LinkedIn most for personal interest like U.S. Masters Swimming and St. Louis Cardinals Fans. I am a member of the Medical Library Association group, but ironically most of the groups I belong to on the “professional” social networking site are personal. Some of the groups are a little more chatty than others but I guess one of the reasons I like the discussion part of it more than Facebook is that the chatter tends to remain on topic and even the chattiest of my groups isn’t nearly as busy as Facebook (at least in my groups).

The Medical Library Association group is not chatty at all. In fact I think it is more of a gathering of medical librarians instead of a group discussing things (that is much the same on their Facebook page). Perhaps that is because we medical librarians still do most of our chatting on Medlib-l.

As new topics and trends come to light, groups often emerge from them. The latest one to emerge that might be of interest to librarians is the Career Sustainability group. It appears their are two Career Sustainability group, this one is for librarians and was created by Deb Hunt.

About the group:

I see my colleagues struggling with layoffs and job insecurity. Yet there are vast opportunities for information professionals and I want to see us benefit from those opportunities.

We must add flexibility, insight, and recognition of opportunity to our essential core skills! We need to move outside our comfort zone and reflect on our accomplishments so we can communicate them to current, future and prospective employers or clients. Else, how will they know what we can do and what we bring to the table?

It is a new group but it already has a lively discussion regarding tips people can share on keeping your career sustainable. While I haven’t chimed in yet, I enjoy reading the responses. I hope the group continues to grow and discuss things. If you are on LinkedIn or are thinking of joining it, ou might want to consider joining the Career Sust

Do You Really Want Flash?

“Flash…aaaah, Flash aaaah…”

Ok I am not Freddie Mercury, but as soon as somebody starts mentioning Flash and mobile technologies I immediately here Freddie singing in the BlackBerry PlayBook commerical. It is no secret that I will be dumping my iPhone for an Android on VirginMobile very soon. (First we have to get my mother-in-law off of our AT&T account, and get her set up with something simple and cheap.) The whole reason I am leaving my dear iPhone is primarily for money reasons. I simply can’t see the rationale for keeping it at $85/month when I can get a smartphone that does all of the same things (not as intuitively, but it does them) for $40/month. However one of my biggest complaints about my iPhone (aside from the declining battery life) has been no Flash.

David Lee King recently wrote a post stating he really hasn’t missed having Flash on his Apple devices. He states that most of his browsing is through RSS feeds and he gets most of his videos through YouTube. But he asks the question, “How about you? Do you find yourself missing Flash? Is it a problem?”

Uh Yeah…both professionally and personally

Professionally:
I work in a different library than David where YouTube is blocked. Hospitals and a lot of other non-public and non-academic institutions block YouTube. So if I or a doctor wants to watch a video of a medical procedure we either have to turn our Apple device to 3G (if we can get a signal in the hospital) and bypass the wifi which blocks it or the video has to be on non-YouTube site.

For a long time Flash was a nice easy way to animate images, many medical resources online show simple Flash videos on surgical procedures, medical conditions, therapeutic excercises etc. All of those videos are unavailable to doctors using iPads on rounds. For example MedlinePlus surgical videos are in Flash and AccessSurgeryvideos are in Flash (I think I remember a McGraw Hill rep say they were gradually converting them from Flash.) These are just a few of the high quality medical videos that are unusable to iPad docs.

Steve Job’s stubborn refusal to allow Flash to work on iPads and iPhones is a pain in the butt professionally and it impacts what videos doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals can access while on the job treating patients.

Personally:
My iPhone is my computer when I am not at home, I am browsing way more than RSS feeds and I am watching more than just YouTube. I am a power user of my iPhone, a total data hog. I use waaay more than 2GB of data. In my general surfing I run across more “No Soup For You” messages because I can’t get Flash. It is annoying as hell and I hate it. Like many typical American GenXers I want what I want NOW! Don’t tell me it is Flash and I can’t see it, I don’t care, I want it to work. Perhaps it is overly narcisitic of me but I don’t see that “I want it NOW!” mentality disappearing. The Millenials are even more demanding and impatient about getting things online.

Now my the LG Optimus V on VirginMobile doesn’t get Flash but then again I will be paying $40/month for 1200 min of talk and unlimited texting and unlimited data (crucial to this data hog). So while I will still have the lack of Flash frustration it will be at half the price of my iPhone. For the amount I paid to get an iPhone and to use it on AT&T, the damn thing should have Flash. Once, I can find a smartphone that can do Flash at the right price, I will definitely go for it. And as much as I want an iPad, I keep hearing Freddie in my head and thinking about the BlackBerry Playbook. I don’t know much about the Playbook other than “Flash…aaah” but that alone would me to look at it and consider it over an iPad.

What about you? Are you like David and don’t seem to mind not having Flash? Or you frustrated by the lack of Flash?

Back Door Method to Getting Articles in PubMed: Is Indexing so Important?

A very good friend of mine is a professor who researches and writes a lot on malaria. He emailed me this morning to tell me that he had recently published an article in a journal that was not indexed in MEDLINE, but he was able to get the citation and abstract in the PubMed database anyway.

His research is funded by the NIH and the article he published is open access, so he made it available for immediate release and submitted it to PubMed Central. Voila, his article, although not indexed, is in PubMed.

He ended the email saying, “You probably knew this but how come we are never privy to this trick.” This is where I am embarrassed to say that I did not know you could get an article published in a journal not indexed in MEDLINE into PubMed by sumitting it to PMC. I had no idea. I knew there were non-indexed articles in PubMed, but I always understood those to fall into two categories, 1. new and waiting to be indexed 2. articles in indexed journals that aren’t medically related…for example Dynamics of magnetic domain walls under their own interia. Science. 2010 Dec 24;330(6012):1810-3 is in PubMed but isn’t indexed.

I had no idea that PMC articles were automatically added to PubMed. I always thought PMC articles were in journals indexed in MEDLINE that were OA. Now, my friend said in his email that he got his article indexed in PubMed. He was wrong, the article is not indexed. If you search for it in PubMed using only MeSH terms or if you are like me, an avid Ovid user, and you don’t often search the Ovid MEDLINE In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations file you are going to totally miss that article.

Early librarian me probably would have been extremely concerned because the article wasn’t indexed. However, how important is indexing when you can get your article in PubMed anyway without indexing? Let’s face it normal people don’t search PubMed correctly. Almost every library user I see searching PubMed is doing their Google style searching in the database. A simple Google search for malaria and my friend’s last name retrieved the article immediately (top result since it is a 2011 article).

The article isn’t indexed in MEDLINE yet it is totally retrievable through PubMed and that is the DOC (database of choice) for biomedical researchers. Researchers’ understanding of the differences of being in PubMed vs. in the MEDLINE database are already extremely blurry. They interchange the two terms (and librarians do too) when in fact there is a technical difference. PubMed and MEDLINE have become the Coke/Pepsi of medical databases. Two different products but people use the terms interchangeably when ordering a cola soft drink. (Don’t even get me started on the Pop vs Soda debate.) As I mentioned, you have an ever growing group of users who do keyword searching on a structured vocabulary database.

So what is the value of being in MEDLINE when you are in PubMed and what is the value of having a journal article indexed when people don’t search that way anymore? All scientists want is for their research to available to be read and cited. Getting an article in PMC does that. Perhaps it is time for us to let the indexing go. Wow I can’t believe I am saying that as a librarian because I love using MeSH to search. But, just because we love something doesn’t mean that its time hasn’t past.

—-Update—–

My friend gave me permission to repost his email to the blog, to better understand how he as a researcher feels about the whole thing. (All identifying information has been removed or changed.)

From my end, the NIH really cares that you have a PCMID (and a link to the pubmed page) for all manuscripts on your Biosketch or the paper doesn’t count. At least they are heavily moving in this direction to keep people more honest.

Also who cares if the MESH terms didn’t get indexed; the title, author names, and the entire abstract did. My MESH terms would have been earth shattering terms like, malaria, antimalarial drug discovery, new drugs etc. all of which are in the abstract.

I found it all these ways by searching pubmed.gov for: My name, Part of the title, Sentence from the abstract, and keywords

It is searchable from Google Scholar and is in Ohiolinks now too.

All of which is nice because now people can find it and cite it (infact someone already has). And now that it is in PMC they can read it easily, more so than other articles which are not in PMC or open access.

Basically all he wants is the PCMID and his journal to be findable in PubMed (which it is). As he mentioned he doesn’t care about MeSH. Hmmm something to think about librarians.

What is the Purpose of an Association?

Jane Blumenthal wrote a very thought provoking post on the future of associations. In the past people usually belonged to an association so that they could meet other people with a common interest, make contacts, share information, and learn from each other. These associations helped their members achieve this by holding conferences, producing publications of the profession, and creating networking opportunities. Before the Internet that was an effective method to get like minded professionals connected and communicating.

With the rise of social networking tools and society’s acceptance of alternative communication tools, the question some are asking is, “What is the future of an association?” For Jane, the question is more specific, “What is the future of MLA?”

The MLA Board has had many conversations around this issue. As a result of those discussions, the Emerging Leaders Task Force and its Rising Stars program were created. However, the work of the Task Force raised additional questions. We were mentoring future leaders for the association, but where would they be leading us? The Board has asked the Leadership and Management Section to gather information from our members about where they would like to see the association in 5 years. A task force within the section is currently conducting a survey and focused interviews to gather this information.

Where would you like to see MLA in five years? What do you anticipate your future professional needs will be, and what services can the association provide to meet those needs?

What are your thoughts on the MLA of the future? What is the role of our library association as we are able to connect virtually? Will the Annual Meeting become a giant week long webinar? Will people still write articles for publication in JMLA? What do you think your needs will be in 5 or 10 years from now? Will MLA be able to help you with those future issues? Whether they can or can’t help, what are the ways the association needs to adapt so that it can still remain important in the lives of librarians and address those future needs?

Please feel free to comment and post your thoughts on Janes post. I know lots of us are interested in your thoughts.

Confusion on Withdrawn Article from Cochrane

Yesterday I had a request to do some sleuthing on the article,”Androgens versus placebo or no treatment for idiopathic oligo/asthenospermia. Vandekerckhove P, Lilford R, Vail A, Hughes E. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2007 Jul 18;(4):CD000150. In the PubMed citation there is a nice big WITHDRAWN in front of the title. The doctor wanted to know why the article was withdrawn.

My first stop was The Cochrane Library on Wiley. According to The Cochrane Library,”This review has been withdrawn from The Cochrane Library as it has not been updated since 1996.” Ok makes sense, if the review article hasn’t been updated in that long then I can see withdrawing it. However, I began to look a little more and of course got a little more confused. Apparently another review article (same title, authors, and CD#) was published in 2000 and does not have giant WITHDRAWN printed in front of the title on the PubMed citation.

So my brain started to ask the questions…

If the 2007 wasn’t updated since 1996, was the 2000 article updated?
Why is it when I search for the 2000 article in PubMed there is no mention of it being withdrawn, but when I search The Cochrane Library for both the 2000 and 2007 review articles (both have the same CD#), the databse tells me it is withdrawn?
Shouldn’t PubMed have a big ol’ withdrawn next to the 2000 citation too?

Another question that is bouncing around in my head is in the wake of so many scandals regarding scholarly publishing, were the 2000 and 2007 articles ever updated from 1996? The way The Cochrane Library has it listed it makes me think not. Because The Cochrane Library says the article hasn’t been updated since 1996 makes me believe that the original review article was written and published in 1996 or before. However when I search PubMed there are no articles by these authors on this topic before 2000. Yet when you look at the 2000 citation it clearly points to a 1996 article:

Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2000;(2):CD000150. Review. Update in: Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 1996;(4):CD000150.

Obviously the 2007 review article has been withdrawn and I would be hesitant to use the 2000 one as well. But it is a little hard to figure out the story behind the withdrawal, other than it hadn’t been updated since 1996. But there are still a lot of questions left hanging out there. Now that things are going more digital it seems the breadcrumb path of the article is more nebulous which makes it difficult when those articles are no longer appropriate to use for treatment decisions.

Changing the Look and Feel of Things

Last week I took a bit of virtual vacation. I still went to my regular job, but my brain wanted to disconnect from the blog, Twitter, and Facebook and I did that for the most part. I used that time to look and to evaluate things. As time goes on, new technologies emerge and the way we communicate evolves. This especially noticeable in blogging. Twitter and Facebook are very dominating methods of communication.

So in the next few days (weeks maybe) I am going to be playing around with my blog to try and take advantage of the changes in blogging and technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and anything else I might discover. I will continue blogging. I honestly see a blog as the extension of a 140 character tweet or the slightly longer character length Facebook update. I love sharing things (mainly news items) that I find interesting on Twitter and Facebook but I also like writing a daily post on other topics or discussing a little more in depth the tweeted news items. So, I am going to be playing around with how I can do all of this a little more seemlessly, logically, and easily.

So if you come to my blog and things look wonky, out of place, or totally different. Do not dispair I am just playing around with things. Thanks for understanding while I give the Krafty Librarian site a bit of a facelift.

What Does the Future of TV Mean For Libraries

This topic has been bouncing around in my head for a bit. Thankfully, Bart Ragon at MLA’s Top Technology Trends V discussed it and provided me with the opportunity to blog about it. View the entire Tech Trends video online (or just Bart’s part at about 60 min) using your conference registration number or your econference registration number.

Bart began his topic on networks and the Internet and how it effects our lives both at home and work. According to Bart, in 2001 US adoption of broadband Internet was about 9% now in 2011 it is close to 70% and rising. Our society is increasingly driven by networks and e-content.

Streaming TV is a excellent example of how networks and e-content are shaping how we think about accessing information. Bart mentioned the first time he saw true streaming TV was when the United States invaded Iraq. It has evolved and now someone can watch streaming TV to watch shows and videos on demand. It used to be you could only watch these TV shows or movies on your computer, but with the Wii, Xbox, blu-ray DVD players, Windows Media, etc. you can watch television programming from Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, PlayOn, etc. any time any where.

Why is this a big deal? As Bart mentions, we may not need our cable company any more to watch TV, videos, or movies. Programming is online and portable. Not only can you watch this stuff on your TV through the Internet but also on your iPad or smartphone. The Microsoft Airport TV commerical (YouTube link) of a couple stuck at the airport due to a flight delay watching their favorite reality TV show to kill time, is totally possible. You can create, watch or share content anywhere with a network. Additionally, a network now means more than just the Internet, with iPads and smartphones using 3G, or the cellular network, you just need a signal.

Recently we cut the cable TV in my house. No we did not dig a trench and accidentally cut the line, although we have done that before. We got rid of cable TV. While I loved U-verse TV it just got too expensive (sense a theme in my recent posts about AT&T and costs). If you have a digital TV, you can get your local programming through the air using an antennae. If you remember the days prior to cable and fussing with rabbit ears or an antennae in the attic, rest assured the picture is WAY better and they offer internal antennas that can pick up signals sitting next to your TV (they look like a small sub woofer). Now we still kept U-verse for our Internet, and we even kicked up our broadband package. Using our U-verse home wireless network, computer, and Xbox live we are able to get network TV shows, Hulu, Netflix and another service called PlayOn. *see note at bottom of post*

Ok so now we know how to save money by cutting the cable, but what does this have to do with libraries?

It has to do with libraries because, you can now create and share content almost anywhere. You are not tied down to one device or location. Just like Bart said, more and more content will become available any where and any way. The expectations of people are changing to getting more things in multiple ways or have ubiquitous access. Medical media is out there and growing. How are we as librarians going to handle this? This stuff is in the cloud, it isn’t a CD, DVD, or slide that we can physically touch and catalog. Not only does it make finding these medical multimedia things more difficult, but the issue of access will be turned on to its ear. In the past access was checking out a DVD and playing it on the TV or your laptop. Boom, you had access. Now it involves networks, signal strength, viewing rights, multiple devices, and the ability to adapt to the on demand needs/wants of people. Bart gave the perfect example of how a medical school put the links to chapters in their ebook collection on their online course system. The content was licensed for 4 concurrent users yet there were over 150 students. The library had to do some education with the medical school because people already have the beginnings of an on demand mentality.

As more and things become available whenever and wherever, libraries will need to adapt to provide appropriate service models, education, and resources.

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Hulu has a free and a pay version, we have the free version. Netflix has mulitple subscription models, we have the cheapest model which is $8/month for online videos. Personally, I would not get HuluPlus (pay version of Hulu) and Netflix because they are very similar in conent. Hulu has the better network/cable programming (which is available through the free version) and Netflix has the better movie stuff.

PlayOn is a pay service (multiple pricing models) we paid $40/year. It is software that you install on your Windows PC. It allows you to use your Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or other supported deviceto access feeds from content providers like Hulu, Netflix, Comedy Central, CBS, YouTube, MLB.tv, your personal media, and more. PlayOn is both browser and media server software, built into one. It browses content from various online providers, and displays that content directly on your television, instead of on your PC screen. PlayOn has an iPhone and iPad app to watch your content on those devices as well.

I have had friends ask me how we cut the cable and still get so much programming for less than $11/month ($20 if you count the cost to bump up our data connection). However, this was supposed to be more of a post on how on demand TV is a mirror for on demand at work. If you want more info on how to cut the cable contact me and I will give you the details. It wasn’t overly hard, just a lot of trial and error.