Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services

Our bibliographic systems have not kept pace with changing environment around us - the Internet. The continuing proliferation of formats, tools, services, and technologies has upended how we arrange, retrieve, and present our holdings. Our users expect simplicity and immediate reward and Amazon, Google, and iTunes are the standards against which we are judged and rightly adjudged poorly.

Bibliographic Services Task Force (BSTF) [1] - The UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA LIBRARIES - has recommended following for keeping up the bibliographic systems compatible with the changing times:


I. Enhancing Search and Retrieval
-Provide users with direct access to item
-Provide recommender features Support customization/personalization
-Offer alternative actions for failed or suspect searches
-Offer better navigation of large sets of search results
-Deliver bibliographic services where the users are
-Provide relevance ranking and leverage full-text
-Provide better searching for non-roman materials

II. Rearchitecting the OPAC
-Create a single catalog interface for all of UC
-Support searching across the entire bibliographic information space

III. Adopting New Cataloging Practices
-Rearchitect cataloging workflow
-Select the appropriate metadata scheme
-Manually enrich metadata in important areas
-Automate metadata creation

Podscope

Podscope is the first search engine that actually allows you to search for spoken words within any audio or video file.

Global Digital Format Registry

The Harvard University Library (HUL) has received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a two year project leading to the deployment of the Global Digital Format Registry (GDFR). The GDFR will provide sustainable distributed services to store, discover, and deliver representation information about digital formats.

A Blogger at Every Table

PLA Blog - The Official Blog of the Public Library Association

"A Blogger at Every Table" means that we have an obligation to our fellow librarians to represent and relay important information to those who couldn't attend the numerous meetings at these events.

Cosmetic surgery and non-surgical cosmetic treatments

UK Government - Department of Health has launched a site on "Cosmetic surgery and non-surgical cosmetic treatments". The site is expected to provide information enabling people to make an informed decision about whether or not to have surgery or non-surgical treatments. The site has been compiled to meet the requirements of their "Report of the Expert Group on the Regulation of Cosmetic Surgery".

It includes list of all cosmetic procedures, with details of what each treatment involves, any potential risks, and what results to expect.

There is also information on how to check that the care providers have the right qualifications and experience.

Constructing Web subject gateways using Dublin Core, RDF and Topic Maps

Constructing Web subject gateways using Dublin Core, RDF and Topic Maps

Abstract


Introduction. Specialised subject gateways have become an essential tool for locating and accessing digital information resources, with the added value of organisation and previous evaluation catering for the needs of the varying communities using these. Within the framework of a research project on the subject, a software tool has been developed that enables subject gateways to be developed and managed.

Method. General guidelines for the work were established which set out the main principles for the technical aspects of the application, on one hand, and on aspects of the treatment and management of information, on the other. All this has been integrated into a prototype model for developing software tools.

Analysis. The needs analysis established the conditions to be fulfilled by the application. A detailed study of the available options for the treatment of information on metadata proved that the best option was to use the Dublin Core, and that the metadata set should be included, in turn, in RDF tags, or in tags based on XML.
Results. The project has resulted in the development of two versions of an application called Potnia (versions 1 and 2), which fulfil the requirements set out in the main principles, and which have been tested by users in real application environments.

Conclusion. The tagging layout found to be the best, and the one used by the writers, is based on integrating the Dublin Core metadata set within the Topic Maps paradigm, formatted in XTM.

Video on MeSH - Medical Subject Headings

Video on MeSH - Medical Subject Headings

So you want to search the largest bibliographic database in the field of Medicne i.e. PubMed. Let me tell you that you need Knowledge of MeSH for better precision and recall in your search results.

The bad news is that MeSH is not easy to learn.

But the good news is - US National Library of Medicine has produced a 12-minute video on MeSH. It is on development, structure and use of the MeSH vocabulary.

This video is available on the NLM Web site in three formats: Macromedia Flash (60MB), Apple QuickTime (100), and Windows Media formats (30MB). [So try only if you have a broadband connection]

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/video/

ACADEMIC LIBRARY AS A VIRTUAL DESTINATION

THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY AS A VIRTUAL DESTINATION
By Jerry D. Campbell
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0610.pdf

..Even before the Web was introduced,academic libraries had started to create digital libraries of trustworthy information..

..Academic libraries now widely report that reference transactions have expanded from the reference desk to online chat,individual consultations, e-mail,and telephone..

..If archives could be digitized and tagged with the proper metadata, they would no longer be location-bound and they would be much simpler to find and use..

Indian Medlars Centre (Bibliographic Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre, New Delhi - 110003, India)"

IndMED Site is a gateway to article published in Indian Biomedical Journals. It indexes about 77 of them.

Read more at indmed.nic.in/

Open-Source Software for Libraries

Creative Librarian Blog provides a list of Open Source Softwares for Libraries

Reference to my Blog

A reference has been made to my blog in the Science Library Pad in the context Library 2.0. in an article - Welcome. You've Got New Library®

Reference to my Blog

A reference has been made to my blog in the Science Library Pad in the context Library 2.0. in an article - Welcome. You've Got New Library®

Medical Video Podcasts

Arizona Heart Institute and Arizona Heart Hospital offers video podcasts for the public on healthy heart living at http://www.cvmd.org/ .

Unacknowledged convergence of open source, open access, and open science

Unacknowledged convergence of open source, open access, and open science

A number of open initiatives are actively resisting the extension of intellectual property rights. Among these developments, three prominent instances — open source software, open access to research and scholarship, and open science — share not only a commitment to the unrestricted exchange of information and ideas, but economic principles based on (1) the efficacy of free software and research; (2) the reputation–building afforded by public access and patronage; and, (3) the emergence of a free–or–subscribe access model. Still, with this much in common, the strong sense of convergence among these open initiatives has yet to be fully realized, to the detriment of the larger, common issue. By drawing on David’s (2004; 2003; 2000; 1998) economic work on open science and Weber’s (2004) analysis of open source, this paper seeks to make that convergence all the more apparent, as well as worth pursuing, by those interested in furthering this alternative approach, which would treat intellectual properties as public goods.

Relationship between "IndMED" and "Yoga

medlib : Message: Relationship between "IndMED" and "Yoga for depression: The research evidence"!!

I just came accross an article where researchers from UK included
IndMED [ http://indmed.nic.in ] as part of their research methodology.

Check-out - Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 89, Issue 1-3, Pages 13-24
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2005.08.013

Cleveland Clinic Disease Management Project

The Cleveland Clinic Disease Management Project is a good source for practical treatment strategies developed by physicians. There is no cost to view the material and there are no barriers to accessing the content. It has 40 chapters covering 10 medical specialties authored physicians from The Cleveland Clinic. The Treatment recommendations are tied to national practice guidelines, wherever possible. Citations within the chapter are hyperlinked to a list of references.

A Pitch for the Wikipedia Concept

Are Traditional Peer-Reviewed Medical Articles Obsolete?

Are Traditional Peer-Reviewed Medical Articles Obsolete?
A Pitch for the Wikipedia Concept

COURSE HANDOUTS on BIBLIOMETRICS

COURSE HANDOUTS on BIBLIOMETRICS

BIBLIOMETRICS AS A RESEARCH FIELD: A course on theory and application of bibliometric indicators. W. GLÄNZEL. COURSE HANDOUTS. 2003.

Searching for the Right Search -- Reaching the Medical Literature

NEJM -- Searching for the Right Search -- Reaching the Medical Literature

There are many search engines and many ways to gain access to the online medical literature. At the moment, however, Google is the most widely used. Other widely used search tools are PubMed, a federal government portal that offers access to the enormous database of citations and abstracts at the National Library of Medicine; Google Scholar, which specifically searches the scholarly literature; and Yahoo, the search engine of the Sunnyvale, California, company of the same name. These search engines are available to anyone who has an Internet connection; none require registration, and searching is free of charge.

Librarians 'suffer most stress'

Librarians 'suffer most stress'

"Fighting fires may sound taxing, chasing criminals demanding, but a new study says that working in library is the most stressful job of all."

BBC News - Thursday, 12 January 2006, 12:34 GMT

BBC NEWS | UK | Librarians 'suffer most stress'

Library 2.0 Debate

There’s a debate/discussion going on on the web right now about Library
2.0. Some people are denying it exists - some people are asking for a
new label - and everyone has a different idea of what exactly Library
2.0 means.
What I Learned Today…»Blog Archive » Library 2.0 Debate

How do we motivate our researchers?

"Publishing a research report is an integral part of the research
process itself. Therefore, if electronic publication were to be seen by
scientists as a token of relevant modernity, in contrast to the methodologically
outmoded publication in print, that perception would probably constitute
a strong motive force in favour of e-journals and self-archiving...
..Therefore, a general answer to the question raised could
be as follows: ‘To motivate researchers to publish in open access journals
or archives, one should demonstrate to them that such a mode of publication
affords a higher quality to the report than traditional publication, or
at least signifies that the report is of unusually high quality.’..
...The system of peer review is so well established
that many scientists regard it a criterion of scientific quality and tend
to publish in peer-reviewed journals only. However, the system has dual
effects. It both weeds out low quality manuscripts and makes it difficult
for highly original papers to get published. Peer review stimulates the
production of main-stream, medium quality work...

ScieCom Info

Online, social loafers become productive when given a challenge

Research Notes

Online, social loafers become productive when given a challenge

New research shows that people in online groups contribute more when issued a challenge and when they believe their efforts provide a unique benefit.
...The paper, "Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online
Communities," appeared in the proceedings of the Association for
Computing Machinery Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative last
month.

Frappr

Create a map for your group. Share Group Photos
Get others to add themselves. It's easy and fun! Frappr!

SOA Methods for Library Services

Service-Oriented Architecture Methods to Develop Networked Library Services. Service Oriented Architecture Symposium December 9, 2005
by Richard Akerman
NRC CISTI

What's Digg?

digg

What's Digg? Digg is a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

deli.ckoma

del.icio.us stats - deli.ckoma

Statistic data on number of posts per day. A post is a bookmark a user adds to his collection.

Seven key concepts for Web 2.0

Infomancy » SL2.0: Capturing Web 2.0

Seven key concepts for Web 2.0
-The Web as a Platform
-Harnessing Collective Intelligence
-Data is the Next Intel Inside
-End of the Software Release Cycle
-Lightweight Programming Models
-Software Above the Level of a Single Device
-Rich User Experiences

11 reasons why Library 2.0 exists and matters

blyberg.net » 11 reasons why Library 2.0 exists and matters
-L2 is partially a response to a Post-Google world
-L2 requires internal reorganization
-L2 requires a fundamental change in a library’s mission
-L2 requires a fundamental change in how we handle “authority”
-L2 requires technological agility
-L2 challenges library orthodoxy on almost every level
-L2 requires a radical change in the way ILSs and vendors work
-L2 both enables and requires libraries to work together
-L2 is actually happening
-L2 is essential for survival/pertinence

L2 is partially a response to a Post-Google world

blyberg.net » 11 reasons why Library 2.0 exists and matters

Google’s impact on the way we do business has already created profound changes in usage patterns at our libraries. As Google continues to pursue their digitization strategy, libraries will feel increasing pressure to provide services that both compliment and diverge from Google. The frantic search to find our niche is only beginning. Google’s rise to an information uber-gateway is a very real delineation: we’re already using terms like pre-Google and post-Google. While post-Google doesn’t mean L2, the need to find purpose or relevancy (as Sarah suggests) in a time when it’s impossible to compete with Google is a driving force behind L2. It’s clearly something that hasn’t happened before.

AMU - Sun Shine Class

AMU - Sun Shine Class
Originally uploaded by esukhdev.

Just going through my Photographs at FLICKR. Hey This one is interesting - ARD Prasad taking class in Open!! during a training programme at AMU on DSpace. Yes, Open Source should be taught in Open.

Letting others use granular pieces is all about Library 2.0

ALA TechSource | What Is New about Library 2.0

It's about letting others use granular pieces of our content where they want, when they want, how they want, automatically, specifically online

open data and open APIs enable scientific mashups

Science Library Pad: open data and open APIs enable scientific mashups

Will 2006 be the year of the mashup? Originally used to describe the mixing together of musical tracks, the term now refers to websites that weave data from different sources into a new service. They are becoming increasingly popular, especially for plotting data on maps, covering anything from cafés offering wireless Internet access to traffic conditions. And advocates say they could fundamentally change many areas of science — if researchers can be persuaded to share their data.

Interdisciplinary differences in attitudes towards deposit in institutional repositories

Allen, James (2005) Interdisciplinary differences in attitudes towards deposit in institutional repositories. Masters, Department of Information and Communications, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK).
E-LIS - Interdisciplinary differences in attitudes towards deposit in institutional repositories

The attitudes and behaviours of academics from different disciplines towards depositing their work in institutional repositories are compared. This is achieved through the use of a survey strategy, and by examination of the contents of a twenty-five UK institutional repositories. The survey targets humanities academics, and the data is compared to that from previous surveys focusing on scientific, technical and medical (STM) disciplines.

The number of humanities documents in institutional repositories is currently far lower than that in STM disciplines. Awareness of Open Access amongst humanities academics is also low. However they perceive many advantages to depositing their work in institutional repositories, especially for the reader, not for themselves. Around two-thirds of respondents would deposit work in institutional repositories, despite having several concerns. Those who would not deposit work in this way perceive the same disadvantages: potential for plagiarism, the apprehension of interfering with publishing their work elsewhere, and the fragility of online means of dissemination.

Increased depositing in institutional repositories in the future depends on encouraging authors of the advantages of doing so, not only to others but also to themselves. At this early stage of development understanding the attitudes of academics in different disciplines is crucial.

Open access self-archiving: An author study

ECS EPrints Service - Open access self-archiving: An author study

Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author study. Technical Report, External Collaborators, Key Perspectives Inc..

Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact

ECS EPrints Service - Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact

Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact

What is Open Access?

Open Access

Open Access (OA) is free, immediate, permanent online access to the full text of research articles for anyone, webwide.


There are two roads to OA:


(1) the "golden road" of OA journal-publishing , where journals provide OA to their articles (either by charging the author-institution for refereeing/publishing outgoing articles instead of charging the user-institution for accessing incoming articles, or by simply making their online edition free for all);


(2) the "green road" of OA self-archiving, where authors provide OA to their own published articles, by making their own eprints free for all.

Web 2.0 Connectedness

SitePoint Blogs » Web 2.0 Connectedness

With "Web 2.0" on everyone’s lips, it seems like every bright mind on the Web is focused on building the next killer app. Small and focused seems to be the flavour of the month: Gmail is great at email, Flickr nails photos, and CalendarHub and its ilk have got calendars just about licked. But as we embrace each of these disparate services, we further segment the data we rely on day-to-day, making it more difficult to use them together when we need to.

If you believe the pundits (yours truly included), openness and standards compliance are two of the characteristics that should define any true member of the Web 2.0 stable. Any data you put into a Web application should be available to pull out again in a portable format, and should be accessible to other applications through well-documented APIs.

CalendarHub

CalendarHub - Web Calendars

Create a Calendar That You Can Access from Anywhere

Journal impacts in evaluating individuals has its inherent dangers

JAMA -- The History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factor, January 4, 2006, Garfield 295 (1): 90

The use of journal impacts in evaluating individuals has its inherent dangers. In an ideal world, evaluators would read each article and make personal judgments. The recent International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication (http://www.jama-peer.org) demonstrated the difficulties of reconciling such peer judgments.

Ranganathan's Monologue on Melvil Dewey

Ranganathan's Monologue on Melvil Dewey

It's a 1964 recording of the great librarian S.R. Ranganathan giving a fifteen-minute talk about his connections with Melvil Dewey.

Skill Kit - PubMed

NLM Technical Bulletin, Nov–Dec 2005, Skill Kit: Retrieving Citations from a Journal Issue in PubMed®

Skill Kit:
Retrieving Citations from a Journal Issue in PubMed®

Skill Kit articles provide search hints, review system features, and cover data and indexing issues for NLM® databases, expanding your search skills and knowledge.

Tech Tools for Learning

Cable in the Classroom - Access Learning

Tech Tools for Learning
Innovative, interactive technologies provide new potential for learning—in and out of classrooms.

Automated Assessment of the Quality of Depression Websites

Journal of Medical Internet Research - Automated Assessment of the Quality of Depression Websites

Since health information on the World Wide Web is of variable quality, methods are needed to assist consumers to identify health websites containing evidence-based information. Manual assessment tools may assist consumers to evaluate the quality of sites. However, these tools are poorly validated and often impractical. There is a need to develop better consumer tools, and in particular to explore the potential of automated procedures for evaluating the quality of health information on the web.

OAI for Beginners - the Open Archives Forum online tutorial

Open Archives Forum - OAI-PMH Online Tutorial

OAI for Beginners - the Open Archives Forum online tutorial

This tutorial is an introduction to the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

Working through this tutorial you will:

* gain an overview of the history behind the OAI-PMH and an overview of its key features;
* achieve a deeper technical insight into how the protocol works;
* learn something about some of the main implementation issues;
* find some useful starting points and hints that will help you as an implementer.

NCBI search toolbar

NCBI Search Toolbar

The NCBI search toolbar is a small program for your Web browser. It allows more convenient searching of the NCBI databases:

* searching through the search box
* searching with the right mouse button
* highlighting search results

It also has shortcuts to NCBI resources.

Soople.com

UBC Google Scholar Blog: Medical search for dummies, Part I

Basic Googling the easy way! Soople.com, though not affiliated with Google, will help you refine your search tasks and teach you the commands. Easy.

Blogger Librarians

PubSub Community Lists: The Librarian List

Librarians have been part of the online environment for decades. It didn't take long for them to get excited about blogs. This list shows the most influential librarian blogs, based on LinkRank.

Google Medicine and Open Access

UBC Google Scholar Blog: Google Medicine and open access - team players in health

href="http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/googlescholar/googlemedicine.pdf">Google Medicine and open access (OA): team players in knowledge-based healthcare - by Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical librarian

Story of the OA repository at India's National Informatics Centre

Open Access News

Story of the OA repository at India's National Informatics Centre


Sukhdev Singh, and Naina Pandita, Building the open access self-archiving repository for the bio-medical sciences at National Informatics Centre, in: National Convention of Medical Library Association of India, November 7-9m 2005, Bangalore, India.



Abstract: Self-Archiving is an important model of the Open Access movement. National Informatics Centre has been providing various services and products to the biomedical community. Building up a Self-archiving repository for Bio-medical and Allied sciences was a natural extension of these activities. To make this repository interoperable with other such repositories Open Access Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) was adopted. The selection of suitable software for the archive was done from OAI-PMH compatible softwares. GNU EPrints was finally selected. A prototype was build for planning of activities, demonstration and checking security aspects. To provide subject-wise browse view to the archive a MeSH based categorization was adopted. A dedicated server was procured and installed in the NIC Network Domain under RedHat Advanced Server Version 3.0. EPrints software was then installed and customized. Making scientists and authors aware of Open Access and its benefits remains a major challenge for any such attempt. However efforts are bearing fruits in the form of Open Self-archiving repository for Bio-medical and Allied Sciences i.e. OpenMED@NIC.

Whiteboard

Collaborative writing software online with Writeboard. Write, share, revise, compare.

Writeboard is perfect for...

Authors, journalists, PR folks, editors, and publishers
Bloggers or freelance/independent writers
Letter writers, songwriters, poets, comedians, creatives
Students, professors, and groups collaborating on a paper

Pharmpedia

Pharmpedia:About - Pharmpedia

Pharmpedia is a free content Pharmaceutical encyclopedia, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. The site is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit this page link. It runs on MediaWiki software.


Pharmpedia began on May 1, 2005 by founder Raja Vege,Toronto,Canada and a few enthusiastic pharmacists in Canada, USA and India. As of today, there are 747 articles in English language.

All text in Pharmpedia, and most images and other content, is covered by the Creative Commons License . Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the CCL license ensures the content will remain freely distributable and reproducible

Top 11 Trends for Organizational Learning

Top 11 Trends for Organizational Learning

The Learning Circuits Blog: Top 11 Trends for Organizational Learning

# Google
# Blogs
# Wiki's
# Open Source
# IM/VOIP (Instant Messaging/ Voice Over Internet)
# Ambient Information
# Mobile Phones as Content Inputs/Outputs
# Podcasts
# Computer Games driving educational simulations
# Growing Training Budgets
# More Decentralized College Programs