Starting today (Thursday 5/14/09) I will only be posting on the MLA Official Blog for the Annual Meeting. I will then resume posting on this blog starting June 1st after my vacation.
For those of you going to Hawaii, I hope to see you. For those of you who can’t be with us at the meeting, I hope the posts from me and the other bloggers will help keep you up to date with the events and information at the meeting.
Citrix has announcedthe immediate availability of Citrix Receiver for iPhone. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog(TUAW) the “Citrix guys (were) running around the show floor at Macworld Expo this year, surreptitiously demoing an early build of this app to anyone who walked within range.”
So why is the iPhone Citrix app a big deal for hospitals? Citrix is used at many U.S. Hospitals to provide a secure method for accessing computer information. Most often people see it used when they are trying to access information on the hospital’s intranet or email from off campus. At many hospitals Blackberry’s are the only mobile phones that are able to access email from off campus. Many hospitals were very reluctant to allow iPhone users the same type of email access because of security concerns.
I have an iPhone and I work at a hospital that currently does not allow iPhones to access hospital email due to security concerns. I have been keeping an eye on the situation because I would like to access my work email from my phone. (I really am not a work-a-holic I’m just one of those Gen-Xers who wants everything integrated and available when I want it.) Unofficially I have noticed and large increase in doctors and medical students carrying iPhones instead of Blackberrys. I have wondered if/when the number of iPhone doctors wanting email access would tip the IT people into considering them.
Now that Citrix has a free iPhone app allowing users to access secure applications, it will be interesting to see how many hospitals will begin allowing access to resources using iPhones. I cross my fingers.
Right now the MLA 2009 has been rather quite. There hasn’t been much discussion going on but people have been joining Twitter and clicking to “follow” MLA 2009. Tonight MLA 2009 will begin the process of following all of its followers. This might sound confusing but it really isn’t. The easiest way to see and follow a conversation is for both parties to be following each other. If only one person is following then the discussion is one way only.
Example:
Krafty is following MLA 2009 but MLA 2009 has not yet chosen to follow Krafty.
In this example Krafty can see everything MLA 2009 posts because she is following MLA 2009. But MLA 2009 does not see anything Krafty posts because it is not following her.
Therefore MLA 2009 will begin to “follow” all of its “followers” this evening. That way anybody going to http://twitter.com/mla2009 will be able to see the discussion among the followers.
In order for this discussion to work don’t forget the following:
Remember to use the hastag #mla09 for anything related to the meeting.
If you want to discuss something on MLA 2009 Twitter feed you can type @mla2009 along with #mla09.
Don’t forget to read Keeping Up With Events at MLA for more information on Twitter. Any questions please make a comment. Conference tweeting is still very new and we are all learning as we go.
Things have been kind of hectic for me lately. I have been working on MLA’s Official Blog for the Annual Meeting and I recently moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress. Add in my regular work and life events and I have been one busy person. So I apologize if I am a little late addressing this recent news item, but I have been wanting to blog about it for some time.
It was recently discovered that Elsevier published six publications between 2000 and 2005 that were sponsored and by a drug company. The publications were made to look like peer reviewed medical journals and the sponsorship behind the journals was not disclosed.
According to a post by Bob Grant on The Scientist.com (free with free registration) Elsevier is conducting an “internal review.” The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine is at the heart of the allegations. The publications were paid for by Merck and the contents were basically a “compendium of reprinted scientific articles and one source reviews, most of which presented data favorable to Merck’s products.”
According to an Elsevier spokesperson, the sponsored article publications were put out by the Australia office, bore the Excerpta Medica imprint from 2000-2005 and published under the titles; Australasian Journal of General Practice, the Australasian Journal of Neurology, the Australasian Journal of Cardiology, the Australasian Journal of Clinical Pharmacy, the Australasian Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, and the Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint [Medicine].
This story is continually evolving. Since TheScientist.com broke the story, op-ed columns and blogs have been weighing in on the topic. Slashdot pointsto two interesting posts by librarian bloggers Bibliographic Wilderness and Laika’s MedLibLog. Ben Goldacre wrote in The Guardian about information emerging in an Australian court case regarding a Merck and Vioxx case. The information revealed email documentation of a “hit list” of doctors critical of the company or the drug. According to The Guardian the hit list included words such as “neutralise”, “neutralised” and “discredit” next to the doctors’ names. Goldacre reports that subsequent emails described other unethical tactics such as interfering with academic appointments and reducing funding. Of course Elsevier is not the only publisher to have been accused of these type of tactics. The Wall Street Journal Health Blog reported on JAMA’s actions last spring when two professors contacted JAMA regarding an article where the author may have had a possible conflict of interest and later then published a Rapid Response in BMJ regarding possible connections between the author of JAMA article and the drug company.
All of this is very unsettling. Now that the horse is out of the barn and Elsevier has admitted to publishing sponsored articles and falsely presenting them peer reviewed, what happens? Are there any real repercussions? What is to stop the next drug company from doing the same thing (only better so we don’t find out)? How do we get those junk articles out of the medical system. They are already out there printed in the real world, how is the average physician who doesn’t read blogs going to know about them? The mainstream media (Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC) and other news agencies have been curiously quite regarding this, yet I hear about the stupid swine flu every time I turn on the T.V. If you think the average doctor reading the articles should just “know” you might be wrong. According to testimony in a trial, George Jelinek, Australian physician and member of the World Association of Medical Editors, said the “average reader” could easily mistake the publication for “genuine” peer reviewed medical journal.
So what happens next? Is there anyway to right the wrong?
We have created several different ways for you to keep up to date with information and events at MLA.
The Official MLA Blog– We have 21 people who have volunteered to dedicate their time to writing and posting information about the conference.
MLA20o9 Twitter Account – Follow live discussions, comments and questions that are happening at the conference on Twitter. You don’t need a Twitter account to do this but it is helpful if you do.
If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can go to http://twitter.com/mla2009 and watch the discussion.
If you do have a Twitter account and you want to participate, the easiest method is to follow MLA20o9. Then go to TweetChat. Login using your Twitter login and password and then type in mla09 for the room. TweetChat will allow you to watch and (participate if you want) all discussions that use the #mla09 hashtag.
You can use Twitter’s web page to participate (you have to hit Refresh to get updates) and there are several software programs that make the Twitter experience a little more interactive. Some of like twhirl and TweetDeck must be installed on your computer. TweetChat is a web program (no install required) that allows you to watch a specific discussion on Twitter. For those of you with iPhones Tweetie ($2.99) and TwitterFon (free) are two popular apps.
MLA 2009 Flickr Group – View photos taken at the meeting.
If you aren’t at the meeting you can view the photos by going to http://www.flickr.com/groups/mla2009/
If you are at the meeting and taking pictures, please consider posting them on flickr under the MLA 2009 Group http://www.flickr.com/groups/mla2009/. If you have a flickr account click on Groups and then search for MLA 2009. You must post your photos first to your account then add them to the Group by clicking on each phonto then clicking on the icon “Send to Group” which is located just above the picture.
Go to the MLA Official Blog to see their picture and read their bios. If you are in Hawaii and happen to see one of us, say hi.
As you may or may not have noticed my blog hadn’t been updated for about a week or so. It turns out I have been working towards migrating my blog from Blogger to WordPress. It was a little bumpy and I didn’t know that it would happen when it did so I wasn’t able to give any advance notice.
Thankfully Blake at LISHost has been very helpful getting things straightened out.
Bear with me while I begin repopulating the blog with my old posts (hopefully the comments too). Things will still be a little bumpy but I hope to have things ironed out soon.
In the meantime don’t forget to go to the MLA Official Blog http://npc.mlanet.org/mla09/ for news and information at the Annual Meeting.
The Library Diva got me into blogging. I have decided to give it a go. Bear with me while I figure out my style and what my blogging will be primarily about.