When will "Key Words" be replaced by "tags"

We know how Meta-data has replaced the term "Indexing" and "Cataloguing" in the last decade. Now it is turn of "Key Words" to be replaced by a term called "tagging". The only difference in these two terms is that "Key Words" are picked up from some standard vocabulary like MeSH by professionals; "tagging" is done by end users to bookmark and categorize an internet resource without any rules or vocabulary. The intention is to retrieve the "tagged" resource in future. But there is a Method in this Madness of tagging. The user indirectly registers a "vote" in favor of the resource being tagged. Such votes when collected on a service provider end can be used to indicate relative popularity of various resources. Del.icio.us is one of such service. This collective behavior is known "collaborative tagging".

Macgregor, George and McCulloch, Emma in their pre-print [accepted for publication] has suggested that Librarians and information professional researchers should take a leading role in research aimed at assessing the efficacy of collaborative tagging in relation to information storage, organization, and retrieval, and to influence the future development of collaborative tagging systems.

I am myself a regular user of Del.icio.us . I can keep links to my favorite articles, blogs, sites etc. and can access them from any computer on the web. I can share them easily by just by giving its URL . Moreover I can check up who else have tagged a particular resource of my interest. Exploring further I can find out from other's tags what all other resources could be of my interest.

Does not this sound similar to "Pearl Growing" in Science Citation Index? Such collaborative tagging sites also present what is known as "Tag Cloud" showing relative importance of tags in terms size and colour of fonts.

So when will be the term "Key Words" replaced by "tags"?.

Will "Google Scholar" beat the "Web of Science" in future ?

Friends,

Just revisited Google Scholar last week. Noticed that it has improved a lot. Searched for "OpenMED@NIC" . It gave 925 hits. Not bad considering that OpenMED@NIC has around 1015 documents. What facinated me was that it presented link "Cited by" along with the hits. Clicking those showed all the articles citing an article in question in OpenMED@NIC.

No wonder Dean Giustini of Biomedical Branch Library, Vancouver Hospital Health Sciences Centre, writes in his blog an item - Google Scholar Rivals Web of Science comparing Web of Science with Google Scholar. He refers to an article by Daniel Pauly and Konstantinos I. Stergiou entitled "Equivalence of results from two citation analyses: Thomson ISI’s Citation Index and Google’s Scholar service. ETHICS IN SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS, 2005:33–35 Published December 22.

"Citation counts were performed across a wide range of disciplines using both the Thomson ISI files and Google Scholar, and shown to lead to essentially the same results, in spite of their different methods for identifying citing sources. This has strong implications for future citation analyses, and the many promotion, tenure and funding decisions based thereon, notably because ISI products are rather costly, while Google Scholar is free."

However one thing irritates me - it shows the following text in hits of OpenMED@NIC.
"@import url(http://openmed.nic.in/eprints.css"
Google could have done better to render the CSS better from the Eprint based repository.

Indian library-cum-museum in the early 1960s

Directory of History of Medicine Collections: India (151)

Prof. S. Zillur Rahman established his personal library-cum-museum in the early 1960s. After founding of Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine Sciences in 2000 AD, this Library became a part of the Academy. The Academy is a non-political, non-governmental and non-profit organization registered under Indian Trust Act, 1882. It is also an accredited organization by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.

Convert to PDF

Free PDF Converter - create high-quality PDF from any printable file type

Convert to PDF from any application by simply 'printing' to the PrimoPDF printer - it couldn't be easier! Within minutes, you can create high-quality PDFs by converting from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and virtually any other printable file type.

Me at Biomedical Information Retrieval Training.

biomedicaltrngfeb
Originally uploaded by esukhdev.

Myself guiding a Doctor to retrieve Biomedical Information during a training programme at NIC.

The "impact factor" revisited

The "impact factor" revisited

The number of scientific journals has become so large that individuals, institutions and institutional libraries cannot completely store their physical content. In order to prioritize the choice of quality information sources, librarians and scientists are in need of reliable decision aids. The "impact factor" (IF) is the most commonly used assessment aid for deciding which journals should receive a scholarly submission or attention from research readership. It is also an often misunderstood tool. This narrative review explains how the IF is calculated, how bias is introduced into the calculation, which questions the IF can or cannot answer, and how different professional groups can benefit from IF use.

Open Access Movement and Libraries

DigitalKoans » Blog Archive » "Open Access and Libraries" Preprint
An in-depth look at the open access movement with special attention to the perceived meaning of the term “open access” within it, the use of Creative Commons Licenses, and real-world access distinctions between different types of open access materials.

Open Access and Libraries by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

Open Access and Libraries by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
An in-depth look at the open access movement with special attention to the perceived meaning of the term “open access” within it, the use of Creative Commons Licenses, and real-world access distinctions between different types of open access materials.

LIS blogs to follow in 2006

Blake Carver has posted list of LIS blogs to follow in 2006 [ 2006 Best Blogs ]

1. The ALA Tech Blog
2. Carnival of the Infosciences
3. Lorcan Dempsey's blog
4. A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette
5. Catalgablog
6. Library Marketing-Thinking Outside the Book
7. The Kept-Up Academic Librarian
8. Librarian.net
9. Library Link Of The Day
10. Conservator

Open access journals

Open access journals have the following characteristics: (1) they are scholarly, (2) they utilize quality control mechanisms like those of conventional journals (e.g., editorial oversight and copy editing), (3) they are digital; (4) they are freely available, (5) they may allow authors to retain their copyrights, and (6) they may use Creative Commons or similar licenses.

OpenMED@NIC now has more than One Thousand documents

Dear Friends,

Biomedical Archive - OpenMED@NIC now has more

than One Thousand documents.

in future, more and more authors would
archiving their published and useful research output here.

has been proved time and again that visibility of research improves
impact. No wonder why more and more journals are now allowing
authors to self-archive their papers.

Web based online spreadsheets

Some Web based online spreadsheets

1 - iRows http://www.irows.com/xo/Welcome.do />
2 - Makesearchable http://makesearchable.com/ />
3 - TrimSpreadsheet http://trimpath.com/project/wiki/TrimSpreadsheet />
4 - Num Sum http://www.numsum.com/ />

Publi.sh

Disposable feeds for personal and group use by Publi.sh!

Publi.sh is the easiest possible way to create a web feed for personal or group use...


* Create a feed for personal reminders.

* Create a feed for updating team members, friends or family.

* Create a podcast feed.

* Create a feed companion to your email newsletter.

Evaluate the health information

How to to evaluate the health information that you find on the Web? Here is a tutorial from NLM.

Evaluating Internet Health Information: A Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine

U.S. Moves to Fight Internet Censorship

ABC News - WASHINGTON Feb 14, 2006 (AP)— The State Department announced plans Tuesday to step up a campaign to combat efforts by foreign governments to restrict use of the Internet.

What do you think? Is it good or bad?

Evergreen

Open-ILS.org | Library software by librarians for librarians.

This is information central for the development effort of an open source Integrated Library System (ILS), named Evergreen. This software is being developed and maintained by the Georgia Public Library Service for use by the Georgia Library PINES Program, a consortium of 252 public libraries. This software can be downloaded for free, and anyone can contribute to development efforts.

Evidence Based Medicine Resources

EBM resources on the web
It is available as a PDF file including both free as well fee - based web resources.

Create PDFs for free

Here are some tools for create PDFs for free.
http://www.expresspdf.com/
http://www.cutepdf.com/

And this one is special in the sense that it can produce a PDF from a RSS Feed .

http://rss2pdf.com

Revisit to 2020 - Shape of Academic and Research Libraries

About two months back, I had posted the following email to various egroups of librarians here in India:

------------------
Subject: [medlib] 2020 - Shape of Academic and Research Libraries


Year 2020 - Online is In and Paper is Out:

Let us assume by the year 2020:
-- All content required for teaching, learning and research is available
online.
-- 24/7 Access is available for free or fee.
-- Online content is well indexed and rated.
-- Vendors provide single point access to premium content and
organized free content.
-- Access is available at a cost, which is less then 10 % of the total
educational cost of a postgraduate student.

What would be shape [should I call future?] of Academic and Research
Libraries?
Any wild guesses?

Let us dare to imagine.

Comments Please.

--------------------

Most of the librarians did not agree to my assumptions. I had bloged my response here itself.

http://sukhdev.blogspot.com/2005/12/re-2020-shape-of-academic-and-research.html

Now - Science Library Pad has now asked similar question - is the research library obsolete? by making following assumptions:

-scientific communication takes place through articles, whether pre-prints or post-prints, journal published or conference presented

-most articles of scientific value will be subjected to peer review of some form

-publisher websites provide acceptable access to articles, linked together online

-articles are also brief enough to be conveniently downloaded (and then typically printed)

Does not these assumptions sound valid? Or will not these be true in India by the year 2020?.

Gmail for your domain

Gmail for your domain

Special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google's webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain

Google Scholar : the new generation of citation indexes

E-LIS - Google Scholar : the new generation of citation indexes

Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) provides a new method of locating potentially relevant articles on a given subject by identifying subsequent articles that cite a previously published article. An important feature of Google Scholar is that researchers can use it to trace interconnections among authors citing articles on the same topic and to determine the frequency with which others cite a specific article, as it has a "cited by" feature. This study begins with an overview of how to use Google Scholar for citation analysis and identifies advanced search techniques not well documented by Google Scholar. This study also compares the citation counts provided by Web of Science and Google Scholar for articles in the field of "Webometrics." It makes several suggestions for improving Google Scholar. Finally, it concludes that Google Scholar provides a free alternative or complement to other citation indexes.

The taxpayer argument for open access

Suber, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 9/4/03

If the research papers based on taxpayer-funded research are locked away in conventional journals that require payments for access, then taxpayers will end up paying twice for the same research.

In Peter Suber's Blog - Migrating journals to Open Journal Systems (OJS)

Suber has covered my presentation at National Workshop on Journal Publishing in India (Bangalore, February 10-11, 2006) in his blog. - Sukhdev Singh, Indian biomedical journals at NIC - issues for migration to OJS, a slide presentation delivered at the National Workshop on Journal Publishing in India (Bangalore, February 10-11, 2006).

Evidence-Based Medicine - Five Steps

Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine lists Five Steps of Evidence-Based Medicine

-Asking Answerable Questions
-Finding the Best Evidence
-Critically Appraising the Evidence
-Acting on the Evidence
-Evaluating your Performance

Blogs and Wiki again

UBCWiki: What blogs, wikis, and Soylent Green have in common...

Open Repositories 2006 Presentations

Some of the presentations of Open Repositories 2006 and online now.

An Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System

ATutor is an Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS)
designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind. Administrators
can install or update ATutor in minutes, and develop custom templates
to give ATutor a new look. Educators can quickly assemble, package, and
redistribute Web-based instructional content, easily retrieve and
import prepackaged content, and conduct their courses online. Students
learn in an adaptive learning environment.

Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0

Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog: "Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0" @ WEB 2.0 JOURNAL

Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0

Let me keep the following in mind while design new sites:

• Encourage Social Contributions With Individual Benefit.
• Make Content Editable Whenever Possible.
• Encourage Unintended Uses.
• Provide Continuous, Interactive User Experiences.
• Make Your Sure Your Site Offers Its Content as Feeds and/or Web services.
• Let Users Establish and Build On Their Reputations.
• Allow Low-Friction Enrichment of Your Information.
• Give Users the Right To Remix.
• Reuse Other Services Aggressively.
• Build Small Pieces, Loosely Joined.

Google Integrates Chat with Gmail

Google Integrates Chat with Gmail

Continuing its push into communications products and services, Google has incorporated a chat client into Gmail, blending the best features of both technologies.

Global Access to Indian Research Paper on medIND

Global Access to Indian Research

Indian Medlars Center: (http://indmed.nic.in/)
This is an initiative by the National Informatics Center (NIC) and Indian Council Of Medical Research (ICMR), two governmental agencies. The center has developed indMED, a bibliographic database of peer reviewed Indian biomedical journals. MedIND (http://medind.nic.in/) is the full-text archive for 28 peer-reviewed Indian Biomedical journals indexed in indMED.

Thank God - OSS4LIB is back

I just checked up the oss4lib site. Thank God, it is back. I had been missing it for sometime. Whenever I use to visit it, a unfriendly message was welcoming me to say that backend database is not connected.
Anyway, it appears to have come up with new technologies at the backend.

Medical Reference for Library Technicians

UBC Library: Subject Page - Medical Reference for Library Technicians

This pathfinder will introduce you to key sources of information in medical reference

digital repositories projects

Digital Library Initiatives Next-Gen Libraries: Campus Technology

By Matt Villano

As digital repositories continue to evolve, keep your eye on these projects.
They may serve as the models for your own digitization initiatives

Data mining in libraries

How can data mining could be useful in the following?

-Collaborative Collection Management
-Collection views
-Library decision-making
-User behavior
-Trend-spotting

Read the following article.

Making Data Work Harder
By Brian Lavoie, Lorcan Dempsey, and Lynn Silipigni Connaway — January 15, 2006
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6298444.html

You would be interested in how -

"OCLC Research has been tackling data mining from two directions. One uses data to create enhanced user experiences. The OCLC WorldMap is a geographical representation of WorldCat title holdings by state, province, and country of publication. WorldMap can be used to identify groups of collections visually for potential collaborative collection development and management."
Library Journal - Making Data Work Harder

Workshop on Scientific Journal Publishing in India

Workshop on Scientific Journal Publishing in India

Venue:
=====
Seminar Hall, National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Indian
Institute of Science, Bangalore

Date Timings:
==============
10th February, 2006.
10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Please be there 10 mintues early)

Schedule:
========
10.00 - 10.15 am - Inagural
10.15 - 11.00 am - 'Open Access Publishing in India' by Prof. Subbiah
Arunachalam, MS Swaminathan Foundation
11.00 - 11.30 am - High Tea
11.30 - 12.15 pm - 'Medknow Publications - A Case Study' by Dr. D.K. Sahu,
Medknow Publications Pvt. Ltd
12.15 - 1.00 pm - 'Indian biomedical Journals at NIC - Issues for
migration to OJS' Sukhdev Singh, National Informatics Centre

European Library

European Library webservice is a portal which offers access to the
combined resources 43 national libraries of Europe. It offers free
searching and delivers digital objects - some free, some priced.

*It brings together disparate collections on your desktop and will allow for cross-collection searching

*It presents integrated results and will deliver digital objects

*It enables types of collection-level searching which would otherwise be impossible

*It is a major contribution to research both in making resources widely
available and by making possible new connections through exploitation
of a huge virtual library collection.

*The European Library encourages new research!

A semantic solution to finding information among peers

IST Results - A semantic solution to finding information among peers

Peer-to-peer systems have advantages over centralised server-reliant networks, but finding information among multiple distributed databases can prove difficult. European researchers solved the problem by adding Semantic Web technology to P2P networks.

Structured Blogging

Structured Blogging

Structured Blogging is a way to get more information on the web in a way that's more usable. You can enter information in this form and it'll get published on your blog like a normal entry, but it will also be published in a machine-readable format so that other services can read and understand it.

Flex beta program

"That's Web 2.0!": Flex 2.0 + Flash Player 8.5 = RIA @ Web 2.0 Journal

The following components are part of the Flex beta program:


* Flash Player 8.5 -- the latest high-performance client runtime for engaging Web experiences

* Flex Framework 2.0 -- the core programming model and component library for Flex

* Flex Builder 2.0 -- an Eclipse-based IDE for developing rich Internet applications with the Flex Framework

* Flex Enterprise Services 2.0 -- essential data services and an open adapter architecture for delivering data-intensive rich Internet applications and deeply integrating with enterprise service-oriented infrastructure

* Flex Charting Components 2.0 -- extensible components for advanced data visualization

Beta versions of the full Adobe Flex 2.0 product line and Adobe Flash Player 8.5 are available now from Adobe Labs. Readers can visit http://labs.adobe.com.

Global Health Facts

GlobalHealthFacts.org, a project of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, provides free, up-to-date and easy-to-access data by country on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other key health and socio-economic indicators

Tagswarm

Tagswarm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TagSwarming is a collaborative cataloging method. Participants donate small amounts of online time to collaboratively tagging a web collection. As an example, the Missouri Botanical Garden is asking users to peruse rare illustrations from their digital library projects, and tag them with keywords with are stored online using a shared del.icio.us account.