Medlib’s Round 1.8. Call for submissions

5 11 2009

Highlight HEALTH will be hosting the next edition of the MedLib’s Round Blog Carnival, edition 1.8, next week on Tuesday, November 10th.

Walter Jessen of Highlight Health:

The Highlight HEALTH Network promotes health literacy by presenting reliable, credible sources of health and medical information. As such, the theme for this month’s edition of MedLib’s Round is Finding credible health information online. As host, I invite you to send your submissions.

The MedLib’s Round Blog Carnival is a monthly blog carnival of the best articles in medical librarianship. With Walter, I would like to stress  that the carnival is not restricted to librarians – anyone can submit as long as the post is relevant and of good quality. If you have an article on medical librarianship, PubMed, evidence-based medicine, information literacy or Web 2.0 tools, submit your article here. Highlight Health will give priority to those posts that focus on finding credible health information online.

Please submit your article no later than Monday Wednesday, November 9 11th at 04:00:00 UTC (12:00pm CST) at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_6092.html

Receive e-mail notification when MedLibs Round 1.8 is published.

An archive of all previous editions of MedLibs Round is listed at the MedLib’s Archive on Laika’s MedLibLog.

Are you a Twitter user? Tweet this!

——————-

The original announcement appeared at Highlight Health

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The New PubMed: Trick or Treat?

31 10 2009

31-10-2009 8-53-21 the new pubmed entry

The New PubMed: Trick or Treat?

After a long days work, when looking at the screen,

there it was: PubMed’s new interface, so it seemed,

But one blink – and it had gone

To come back the following dawn.

The change itself was long announced,

we could play with the new “Advanced”.

Still I postponed and procrastinated,

Pointless: the new PubMed couldn’t wait

any longer, but this Redesign isn’t it for me….

Sure, the front page looks web-2-ish, minimalistic & clean,

which is perfect for the Google-Generation,

the hurry-don’t think-just-slash-i-got-one-publication-

PhD’s, for whom all alterations have been made. 2989360212_882aff28d8 trick or treat

Some people think you just have to wait

& see and get used to it.

but I’m already fed up with it.

I know you all think it is just a Librarian-rant.

Librarians they can stick with the new “Advanced”,

“Advanced” however, is just Limits & Index…

But boy did they make this page look complex!

Sure, the basic researchers seem to be quite pleased.

Busy physicians too, they think it is more easy.

They tell me librarian not to wine:

Go MEDLINE OVID! we stay with this design.”

This is no new idea, didn’t you know:

I long seek refuge in OVID MEDLINE, although1810987271_9044fb5ca0 candy

only for exhaustive searches, that much is true.

So why -having this alternative- am I still feeling blue?

Well, I’m not complaining for myself, but for you.

I don’t speak as a searcher, but as a teacher too.

It is so frustrating that I have to explain to you

that each step you take is now multiplied by two.

NLM says all functionalities are still there.

The problem is you have to find where

I don’t mind the present front page,

but the so called “Advanced” gives no advantage,

at least not for doctors searching evidence.

I teach them “Googling doesn’t make sense“.

Just choose the most important concepts,

work from the History and search words separately.

Begin to find the MesH-terms, and although it is complex

add textwords too, to find papers not yet indexed.

Combine synonyms with “OR” and concepts with “AND”,

Go to the Clinical Queries and use the appropriate command”..

But now it takes so many steps. It is a BIG FAIL

sometimes. You start at the front page, look at the Details,

mapping is wrong, go to Advanced, scroll, scroll, scroll..

to Mesh, “send to Pubmed”, where am I? out of control,

again on the Start page? Go to Advanced again.

Away with Limit and other boxes! – I don’t need them!

The Index yields a MeSH that doesn’t exist?!

Darn, via automatic mapping the multi-term-word is split

in 3 separate words, complete out of context,

as I see In the Details -so I have to re-enter them,

And where have the Clinical Queries gone?

Right, have to scroll the entire “Advanced” page… Yawn…

While it is true that I’m a “bit” exagerating,

my point is that the new PubMed creation

could have been so much better:

not only the functionality, the route also matters.

The redesign is a missed opportunity,

to build an entire new PubMed you see.

The interface is still quite orthodox.2946761628_2eb3e8b009 bittersweet

I want clickable and movable boxes

with MESH in clouds thru which you can “walk”

and Clinical Queries that you can drag and drop

with a mapping tool-you can adjust,***

and savings of your settings, that is  a must.

“But the new PubMed”, you ask me

“what is it: a-trick-or-a-treat?”….

“It looks like a nicely wrapped candy,

but tasting a bit bittersweet?!”

Notes

* These links come from Eagle Dawg-blog: Pubmed: All in the attitude

** doesn’t apply to quick and dirty searches on the front page

*** i.e. allow to split or not

Photo Credits:

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Cochrane 2.0 Workshop at the Cochrane Colloquium #CC2009

12 10 2009

Today Chris Mavergames and I held a workshop at the Cochrane Colloquium, entitled:  Web 2.0 for Cochrane (see previous post and abstract of the workshop)

First I gave an introduction into Medicine 2.0 and (thus) Web 2.0. Chris, Web Operations Manager and Information Architect of the Cochrane Collaboration, talked more about which Web 2.0 tools were already used by the Cochrane Collaboration and which Web 2.0 might be useful as such.

We had half an hour for discussion which was easily filled. There was no doubt about the usefulness of Web 2.0 for the Cochrane in this group. Therefore, there was ample room for discussing technical aspects, like:

  • Can you load your RSS feed of a PubMed search in Reference Manager? (According to Chris you can)
  • How can you deal with this lot of information (by following a specific subject, or not too much people – not many updates on a daily basis; you don’t have to follow it all, just pick up the headlines, when you can)
  • Are you involved in a Wiki that is successful? (it appears very difficult to involve people)
  • What happens if people comment or upload picture on facebook (of the Cochrane collaboration) in an appropriate way (Chris: didn’t happen, but you have to check and remove them)
  • How do you follow tweets (we showed Tweetdeckhashtags # and #followfridays)
  • What is the worst thing that happened to you (regarding web 2.0)? Chris and I thought a long time. Chris: that I revealed something that wasn’t officially public yet (though appeared to be o.k.). Me: spam (but I remove it/don’t approve it).
    Later I remembered two better (worse) examples, like the “Clinical Reader” social misbehaviour, a good example of how “branding” should not be done, and sites that publish top 50 and 100 list of bloggers just to get more traffic to their spam websites

Below is my presentation on Slideshare.

The (awful) green blackgound color indicates I went “live” on the web. As a reminder of what I did, I included some screendumps.

The current workshop was just meant to introduce and discuss Medicine 2.0 and Cochrane 2.0.

I hope we have a vivid discussion Wednesday when the plenary lectures deal with Cochrane 2.0.

The answers to my question on Twitter

  1. Why Web 2.0 is useful? (or not)
  2. Why we need Cochrane 2.0? (or not)

can be found on Visibletweets (temporary) and saved as: Quoteurl.com/sggq0 (permanent selection).

I think it would be good when these points are taken into account during the Cochrane 2.0 plenary discussions.

* possible WIKI (+ links) might appear at http://medicine20.wetpaint.com/page/Cochrane+2.0

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Friday Foolery #6 Man-to-Man-Hug

9 10 2009




Of Art & Medicine

5 10 2009

The topic for Pallimed’s edition of Grand Rounds will be the ‘Art of Medicine/Nursing’ which may be interpreted “as you like, kind of like art.”
Pallimed reviews current palliative medicine, hospice, end-of-life research and seems to have a particular interest in Art, as there is a separate tab about Arts: http://arts.pallimed.org/

Is Medicine an Art?

My first cents: Medicine is art as much as homeopathy is science. Homeopathy can be presented as science, but that is something else.

However….. the definition of ART may be ambiguous? I assumed ART is like Wikipedia defined:

Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics [I]

But in the Merriam-Webster dictionary definitions of (the noun) art include (II):

- skill acquired by experience, study, or observation, for instance <the art of making friends>.
- a branch of learning:
- an occupation requiring knowledge or skill <the art of organ building>

“Art” is derived from the Latin word “Ars”. We all know the Ars Amandi, the art of Love. So, yes, art does mean skill here.

And surely Medicine is an Art, if we mean Art in the sense of skill, not (i.m.o.) in the sense of personal creativity and creations.

Geneeskunde or Geneeskunst?

The Dutch use several words for medicine.

  • “Medicijnen” is used for the study.
  • For the profession (and study) they use: Geneeskunde, where genees=’heal‘ and kunde = ’skill’
  • But there is also a word Geneeskunst, and that can be best translated as the “art of healing” which comes closes to meaning I.

There is inaugurational speech devoted to “Geneeskunde or Geneeskunst”, where Geneeskunst can almost interpreted as a more holistic approach to medicine. In the book Medicine and Law book (H. Nijs, 2005) it is highlightened that even the law uses these terms inconsistently (see Google Books).

In my opinion medicine is geneeskunde, it is a skill.

Medicine in Art,

There are lot of examples of “Medicine in Art”. A famous example is the “Anatomy Lesson” a painting of Rembrandt van Rijn (of Nicolaes Tulp) (1632). It embellishes the homepage of our hospital, the Academic Medical Center (AMC) in Amsterdam.

Our hospital has many works of art, and many expositions. See here for the collections (Dutch). The expositions in our library aren’t even mentioned here.

Art in Medicine

Art is a way to express oneself. For patients, art is an excellent medium to fight their illness or cope with it. At the very least it can be a distraction or a consolation. When hospitalized for breast cancer surgery my mother made me a glazed bonbonnière and I cherish it (normally she wouldn’t have the patience).

There are many forms of art suitable for patients: writing, poetry, music, singing, handcraft, painting etc.

At our library, clinical librarian Heleen Dyserinck organizes regular exhibitions by people (often staff) from the AMC. There may be  paintings, sculptures or photo’s of  people, objects or nature, but also of medical subjects.

Currently Renate Beatrice has an exposition in our library. Her paintings are grouped in several corners. Near my room are paintings of 4 girls, 3 of which are shown below. When I first saw the pictures, they frightened me. I didn’t like them. These are not -so to say- pictures that you hang in your living room.

Later I understood why I found these pictures sinister. The girls try to laugh, but they look unhealthy and sad: it is as if they have the death in their eyes.

Stil later I learned that Renate had a metastatic Wilms’ tumor at the age of 4. She had to spend a lot of time in the hospital and here the doctors Voute † and  Kraker were her herous. Renate is cured, has 3 children, and is an artist. A lot of her pictures are cheerful.  Renate held this exhibition for a special occasion: in honor of the retirement of dr Kraker.

She says:  I don’t paint children in hospitals, because I pity them. no, I paint them because I know them by heart: for years I’ve been one myself. (freely translated from her website)

2-10-2009 18-15-54 schilderijen

inaugurational speech




Old Year/New Year Dutch Grand Ground – Grote visite 1.10

31 12 2008

3138422128_e1b61bc10a-nieuwjaar-vreeswijk-2009

Welcome to the OLD YEAR/NEW YEAR edition of the ‘grote visite’ or Dutch Grand Rounds.

The theme of this Grand Round is past (what has been, history), present (hot news) and future (what to expect, wish, foresee).

We ring out the Old Year with two excellent posts of the dedicated bloggers and initiators of the Dutch Grand Round Jan Martens of MedBlog.nl and Dr. Shock of Dr Shock MD PhD

Jan Martens writes about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Historical Research. As some of you might know (I didn’t) Jan is conducting a historical research about the use of electricity and magnetism in psychiatry. Here he is focussing on video’s of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. He searched Youtube with “transcranial magnetic stimulation” and only found a handful of interesting modern videos, but no old videos of guinea pigs in a magnetic stimulator -which he had hoped for. He would be most obliged if you could help him out with historical videos or other information about TMS.
Dr Shock has already responded to his request, but has found no older video’s. Perhaps youtube is to young for historical video’s, but I can also imagine that researchers are reluctant to show guinea pig experiments to the general public.

Dr Shock MD PhD presents Dr Shock’s popular posts from 2008 and a look ahead for 2009. Dr. Shock wonders whether the popularity of his two most popular posts this year (at least according WordPress Blog Stats), i.e. Sex, Video Games and the Brain and How much Chocolate is Good for your Health? is mainly based on the title and keywords (or the picture? -see his post). He also gives an overview of other top posts and the posts he found the most pleasurable to write. This was a post about empathy in the doctor patient relationship, part of a series about patient doctor relationship and it’s different aspects such as education, self-disclosure to name a few as well the post Why do psychiatrists like detectives?
I share his idea that the most popular posts are not always the posts you enjoyed yourself the most and vice versa. I often wonder why some posts become popular and others don’t.

Dr Shock intends to focus more on the developments of health 2.0 and medical education in the coming year 2009. He made a first step this year to become member of the tweeple community at twitter. A useful community, isn’t it @DrShock?

Dr Shock also asks us which of his posts we enjoyed the most. I think the unanimous answer is: “We like them all, it is the mix”.

Please visit Dr Shock’s blog to read more.

That concludes this edition. Or perhaps it concludes the Dutch Grand Round…….

I took a look at the carnival submission form, but found no new rounds planned, perhaps because a new scheme is still to be made, or perhaps because it will end here and now….

I do hope the Dutch Grand round will be continued, because there are enough good Dutch medical bloggers around. The question is why just few of them actively contribute to this round? Hopefully 2009 will bring a change.

Photo credit: loesenlodewijk Flickr Creative Commons





Long Weekend Cap Griz and Blanc Nez

24 10 2008

http://flickr.com/photos/birgerstichelbaut/

Tomorrow (uuh today) we are going a long weekend to France, near Calais. Somewhere near Cap Griz Nez and Blanc Nez. Hope it will stay dry most of the time.

Well anyway we will enjoy fruit de mer. My eldest daughter loves it. Probably will take extra oysters as well.

http://flickr.com/photos/henia/2825823680/





Palin & Obama, Fun & Photo’s

24 10 2008

Two times Palin and once Obama (and another celebrity)

  1. Sarah Palin as President. Seen on Dr. Shock’s website. Played a while with it, and liked it. Move with your mouse through the oral office and click on objects in the roome. Don’t forget the telephone! You have to go to the website (click here), the photo below is not clickable

  2. Sarah Palin again, but now an interview with John Cleese about her, or is it about parrots?
    I was first tipped by Bercalan Mesko (scienceroll) on Twitter (@Berci), but I found a shorter version on You Tube that I preferred (without another comedian, Cleese will do).
    Both versions I later found on…… Dr Shock’s weblog again. He wrote that the you tube video’s originated from the CleeseBlog. Interesting to follow I suppose. The longer version is also on youtube.
  3. A series of beautiful Obama photo’s by Callie Shell. See here.
    Hattip: Gerard Bierens (weblog zonder haast) via twitter (@gbierens).
  4. An extra one, again from Gerard on another celebrity. http://tinyurl.com/59moz7. LOL! Added Wednesday November 5th, the day that Obama became president of the US.
  5. McCain and Palin Sing (by Henry Hey) (hattip @berci)
  6. Funny Obama Song with a guest performance of Hillary
  7. Awwwwww … poooooor Ron Paul:http://bayimg.com/HalgkAabm (hattip @courosa )
  8. And many, many more Obama video’s on You Tube. I won’t show them all, but you can look at “related video’s. This is one about Barrack Obama funny Pictures and quotes, using the same music as 8.
  9. @gbierens referred to a comic strip in a Dutch local newspaper (ED).
    Obama pays for a drink and leaves the bar. Bartender: “Hey, Obama, don’t you want change?
  10. And finally Obama 08: There is No Spoon. Unique pro-Obama shirt for sci-fi liberals, progressives, Democrats everywhere. Obama is the neo Neo. Break out of the Matrix. See the t-shirt here (hattip @mdbraber)




Wouter’s Request: the 6 W’s of this blog

2 10 2008

Wowter asked appr. 90 dutch library bloggers, including me, to write about our motives for blogging, who whe reach, whether we succeed in building a community, which posts we like most etc. A carnival of excerpts will be presented at a Dutch congres on Library 2.0 (OCN2008).

Of course I will accept his invitation, because:

  • When Wowter (one of the most well known Dutch librarybloggers and an advocate of library 2.0) asks you something, you do it (albeit late)
  • Wowter (and Dymphie) were the first non-Spoetnik-course members responding to my posts, giving tips (making lists is one of them ;) ) and encouraging me to keep on and to look further than your own blog.
  • Wowter was the 10.000st visitor of this blog
  • foremost: it is good to ponder from time to time why and how you do the things you do.

Thus, here are the 5W’s (well 6) of this blog:

WHY?

This blog was started as part of the course SPOETNIK on NEW internet communication methods for librarians. I found many of the web 2.0 tools very useful, especially RSS. Blogging itself was FUN, so I spend most of the course time on blogging. There was a small group of active Spoetnik bloggers who responded to each other. Most of the posts were about the course exercises, or we were just kidding with each other. That was great. But as the course proceeded, I realized that if I was to continue blogging, I should write about other subjects as well and I should build another community. I started to write about….

WHAT?…

Medical librarianship, because that is where my heart is. In fact, that is a mixture of two subjects already: medicine and librarianship. I’m specialized in Evidence Based Medicine and Searching: those are the main topics. I worked for more than 15 years as a scientists: science (and especially immunology, genetics, cancer, nutrition) is a favorite subject as well. I have (secondary) Addison’s Disease, so that inspires me to write about patient-related matter. Furthermore I like to continue writing about web 2.0 tools. Seldomly I will blog about real personal things. But I do plan to write about certain things that happened, little stories, that relate to my life as a scientist, librarian or patient. For instance “the radioactive rat” will be an upcoming story.
My posts are mostly of the “review kind”, they are quite long, go in depth and are “cramped with visuals” according to some and “as easy to skip as to read it all”.
WHO?
My first public consisted of Spoetnik collegues and some interested Dutch librarians 2.0: Dymphie and Wowter. In the beginning I felt like Berci expressed in his slide “Once upon a time on WordPress.com”: very lonely. Similar to Berci, this situation changed when I started to write in English. Till recently I wrote both in English and Dutch, but from now on I will concentrate on English: it costs too much time, most Dutch read English, and since the Spoetnik Cours is over, I get few Dutch responses anyway.
Since I write about many topics I get a broad public. This blog does well in the ratings. It is in the Top 50 Health 2.0 Blogs list ( see here), was high in the Medblog top 25, got a very good critique from the Library + Information Gazette“ (see this post) and a high technorati ranking (up to 43, now 41).

But does this mean I have build up a community? Not necessarily. Although people link to my blog, I don’t get many comments and there aren’t many feed subscribers. That is possibly the consequence of writing in depth about many specialistic topics. For people just interested in either medicine, library or web 2.0 tools there may be too many posts about trivial things (the other subjects). Furthermore, although I do participate in medicine blog carnivals, I think that it is hard for a medical librarian to become part of the medical community.

Similar to many other blogs, the audience of this blog are mainly other bloggers (in the health field), as well as non-blogging medical librarians (including colleagues) and people googling. Many Dutch colleagues read my blog, but few have an RSS-feed or participate in blog discussions. However,that may be general for bloggers: they tend to link more than discuss.
In the first months I got a maximum of 30-50 visitors per day, and sometimes 2-5 during the weekend. Now I regularly get 100 visitors a day and in the weekend no less than 30. My top day was in June: 192 visitors.

WHICH?

Which posts are most successful and which one is my favorite? I guess I like the mixture the most.
If I have to choose I prefer those posts that discuss in depths the ins and outs of a topic (be it health, library or science-related), especially if they make a difficult health subject understandable to many, e.g. “The best study design… for dummies” and “The (un)usefulness of regular breast exam.”
The series about the PubMed: Past, Present And Future, was the most visited, with PART II being viewed 388 times and PART I: 200 times
WHERE?

About 95% of my posts are written at home. I do consult Twitter and the statistictics of my blog regularly, also at work.

WHEN?
Most posts take a lot of time. Keeping up with your sources, browsing, sifting ideas, reading more about the subject, writing, putting figures in the posts (not easy in WordPress), making links, translating into Dutch. It takes me 1 hour – 1 day for one post. I spend 10-20 hours per week on blogging (in the broad sense of the word)

WHY Continue?

  • I like writing
  • I hope to stir up some discussion (but I’m happy with people reading or linking)
  • I learn a lot of other bloggers, microblogging (twitter), RSS-feeds (also of Journals). Since I blog/RSS I keep much better informed and it inspires me to come up with new ideas.
  • By (micro)blogging I keep in touch with other bloggers
  • Some things need to be criticised.
  • Some things are good to call attention to.
  • Ideally, I would like to mix the knowledge and tips gathered elsewhere with my own knowledge and pass it through in a digestible way to others: doctors, nurses, patients, scientists, libarians, teachers
  • I hope that by blogging about health 2.0 I can enthuse non-blogging health- or library experts for web 2.0. Eventually I may even want to give courses on medicine 2.0 or to use web 2.0 tools for education (medical students, staff)

(possibly I’m too late for the carnival, but this post was written under harsh condition. Lying sideways on a sofa in a public room, somewhere in Germany, because there is no wifi at my room, and the batteries only hold for 15 minutes, and the large wooden table is too far from the electric point. Well the musing was useful anyway…)





Grand Round 4.52

16 09 2008

The Grand Rounds Medicine Show is up at Nurse ratched’s place. Many submissions this time, so it was not an easy task for “Mother Jones“. But she has done a wonderful job. (see here)

Next week’s edition of Grand Rounds is being hosted by Dr. Val Jones from Revolution Health.





Medical Grand Rounds 4.51

9 09 2008

Two Medical Grand Rounds at the same day, a Dutch Grand Round (see previous post) and an International (English-language) Grand Rounds.

The latter one (no 4.51) is sung from the heart by Dr. Chris at Applequack. (see here).

The next Grand Round will be at Nurse Ratched’s.





Dutch Grand Round nr. 2

9 09 2008

The 2nd Dutch Grand Round is up at “De gezondheidszorg leuker en effectiever” of Marjolein Fermie. This time there are 7 posts, 3 of them in English.

Next week’s Grand Rounds will be hosted at Medblog.nl. There is no theme for submissions, but posts should relate to medicine or health in some way.

Please read his summary of de Grote Visite here.

——————————————————-

De 2e grote visite kunt u vinden op De gezondheidszorg leuker en effectiever” van Marjolein Fermie. Lees de samenvatting hier.

De volgende ronde is op Medblog.nl van Jan Martens.
Bent u een Nederlandse blogger en heeft u iets geschreven op medisch gebied (in de breedste zin van het woord) meld uw blogpost dan bij Medblog.nl of bij de blogcarnival aan voor de volgende ronde!

Previous posts on this subject/:
(2008/08/26) The first Dutch grand round
(2008/08/16) 1st Dutch grand round expected soon + continuation MedblogNL-top 25 cancelled.
(2008/08/10) a Dutch grand round. Announcement
+ reference to Englisch-language grand rounds.





The First Dutch Grand Round.

26 08 2008

The “Grote Visite” (Dutch for “Grand Round”) had its premiere today. Dr Shock had the honor to open the series at his (English) blog.
Please read his summary of the blogposts here.

———–

De grote visite is in premiere gegaan op Dr Shock’s blog. Lees de samenvatting hier.

U kunt er ook lezen wanneer en waar u zelf een post kunt indienen!
Bent u een Nederlandse blogger en heeft u iets geschreven op medisch gebied (in de breedste zin van het woord) meld uw blogpost dan aan voor de volgende ronde!

Previous posts on this subject/:
(2008/08/16) 1st Dutch grand round expected soon + continuation MedblogNL-top 25 cancelled.
(2008/08/10) a Dutch grand round. Announcement
+ reference to Englisch-language grand rounds.





Simon’s Cat ‘TV Dinner’

26 07 2008

Seen at the website of Francisco van Jole: A hungry cat.

Nice to see for those who love cats (most of the time)

more about “Simon’s Cat ‘TV Dinner’“, posted with vodpod

—-

NL flag NL vlag

Een hongerige kat.

Dit filmpje wil ik de kattenliefhebber (en hater?) niet onthouden. Tamelijk herkenbaar.