ConnectMidwest

ConnectMidwest is brought to you by the Communications Committee of the Midwest Chapter/MLA.

Yesterday, your intrepid chapter blog editor took the Survey of Health Sciences Librarian Blog Readers for Marcus Banks. Although I realize that I monitor and read quite a few librarian blogs, answering the survey questions was a revelation to me. I read A LOT of librarian blogs. There are over 50 blogs written by librarians or published by libraries in my Bloglines feeds. Why? How else could a solo hospital librarian keep up with our rapidly changing profession? I'm always looking for ways to improve services to my library clients. Aren't you? I'm really interested in the results of the survey...perhaps I should go to Las Vegas for the meeting myself!

And here is where I confess that there are a number of blogs that I monitor just for fun. There's Cute Overload, Neatorama, and ever useful, The Generator Blog.

This week's LISNews 10 Blogs To Read In 2008 has some good recommendations of blogs which you, as a librarian, might be interested in reading. I subscribe to about half of these in my aggregator. How about you?

Today is a slow one down here in the hospital basement. So I blocked out about an hour to look through my non-library Bloglines feeds. Some of them have a ginormous number of un-read new feeds. So many feeds, so little time! I snagged this interesting interview with the author of Presentation Zen from Guy Kawasaki over at How to Change the World. I need all the presentation assistance I can get. I usually give presentations to the medical students and interns for their noon lecture. They have all been up since well before dawn and have just eaten lunch. And invariably during the lecture one or two of them will actually fall asleep. Hard to imagine that they could be bored by a presentation about PubMed LinkOut...

And speaking of Web 2.0, have you seen Kawasaki's exercise in citizen journalism, Truemors?

Already, your intrepid blog editor is thinking about how to blog the 2008 Midwest Chapter Annual Conference just up the way in Troy, Michigan. The conference wiki has a Blogging @ Midwest page where you can list yourself if you will be blogging from the conference. And tag your posts and photos Midwest08. One thing that I really enjoyed last year was sharing Flickr photos.

I've picked up these conference blogging tips since the Omaha meeting. And don't miss this tongue-in-cheek advice at A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette. Liveblogging doesn't really work for me. If I'm frantically blogging, I find that I'm not really able to "digest" the information. So I'm hoping that someone else might want to try at this year's conference. How about you?

That conference wiki looks interesting! It will be a great way to share all kinds of information. Looking for a roommate? Shared transportation? Want to know who will be attending which functions? How to get there? Where to EAT?

Want to keep up with all this information? Use your feed reader! Since the conference website main page is in blog format, you will be able to subscribe to find out the latest. There is even a feed for wiki updates! Already in my Bloglines feeds!

The results of the survey are in! It is nice to see the raw results, but I am wondering about how many specific groups of librarians read quite a few blogs as I do. So how many solo hospital librarians with many years of experience like me read a lot of blogs?

Today I attended the Breezing Along with the RML session Developing and Marketing an RSS Journal Service for Your Library. Is "attended" is the correct verb? Participated? I've never used that online presentation software before and it seemed to work fairly well. We could simultaneously see the presenters, their PowerPoint presentation or internet screen, comments and questions from the participants. I couldn't read the smallest print on the presentation slides on my screen, however. Having to use the phone for the audio portion of the session seems so awkward to me.

I saw the presentation in Omaha and wanted to listen again so that I could get more details. Taking one of their ideas, I'm setting up a demonstration feed reader account to show to some of my library users. Right now I'm setting it up with the table of contents feeds from the the library's surgery journals. I'm amazed to find that the Elsevier journals do not seem to have a table of contents feed. Am I missing something here? I might just have to set up a feed from PubMed for those journals. Anyone out there have a better idea?

Mostly for fun and curiosity, I set up a Facebook page for myself. Will you be my friend?

My collegian son uses Facebook extensively to communicate with friends on campus and at other universities. But he certainly is not allowing his mother to see his full profile and his message wall. This is understandable and is one of the reasons I wonder how Facebook can be an effective tool in serving our library clients. I'm certainly not alone in my musings. Melissa Mallon over at ACRLog is much younger than I and shares my concerns. Her post is amusingly entitled "Is Facebook this generation's Rolling Stones?" in reference to the generation gap created between this digital generation and their parents' generation. Here's what she says about this generation, "They're very secretive and protective of their niche, and they just don't want the adults intruding." And who can blame them?

That said, I am going to do some more experimenting with Facebook apps. This weekend over at the SLA Blogging Section blog, there is a useful post on Facebook Apps for Librarians. I want to explore some of these.

And my next question is how Facebook is being used as a communication tool among librarians? I use e-mail extensively and I'm not sure if I want to check even one more place for communications...

ARGH! Just as I am trying to figure out Web 2.0, I find out that Web 3.0 is on its way!

I've been pondering these issues particularly since the upcoming MLA Educational Webcast is entitled Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices: Discovering the Participatory Web. I like that phrase "participatory web" as a description, even better than the term "social media" used in the tagline for this blog. Here is the Wikipedia definition: "...a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services (such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies) which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users."

During January, there has been considerable discussion about the concept of Web 2.0 and its corollary Library 2.0 in librarian blogs. For a taste of the discussion, sample these posts by David Rothman, John Blyberg, and maybe even try the biting, sarcastic wit of Annoyed Librarian.

Have you seen Dean Giustini's BMJ editorial Web 3.0 and medicine: Make way for the semantic web? I printed out the PDF and slogged through it this morning. The table contrasting Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 was very useful. If the next big thing will be the semantic web, then I'm all for it. As an ex-cataloger, I have never felt very comfortable with the concept of folksonomies and uncontrolled vocabularies. Just adding more words somehow seems to make things more confusing and searching more difficult. Dean Giustini has linked to a great video explaining the semantic web over at the UBC Academic Search -- Google Scholar Blog.

So now that we have a chapter blog, how do we get readers? Karen, our intrepid Communications Committee Chair, asked this question yesterday during our committee meeting via conference call. Well, says your intrepid blog editor, I will be posting this week to ConnectMidwest about this very subject! Because why blog if no one reads!

I snagged two useful posts about this in my feed reader last month:

• Our favorite goth Librarian In Black posted Where to list your library's blog online. Got my work cut out for me!
• Over at Problogger, Skellie lists 7 Types of Blog Posts Which Always Seem to Get Links and Traffic with lots of great tips for getting noticed. I suppose Skellie's post itself falls under category 2 "Lists of tips."

One tactic that your intrepid blog editor used to increase the visibility of Conference Call 2007 was to shamelessly invite some popular libraryworld bloggers to check out the blog and mention it in their blogs. As I mentioned before, I particularly enjoyed the crossover posts with T. Scott and our MLA Pres.

This week your intrepid blog editor has been watching an idea spread like wildfire through the librarian blog world, also known as the biblioblogosphere. On Sunday evening, Marcus Banks (NOT the NBA Marcus Banks) posted Why Professional Librarian Journals Should Evolve into Blogs. Here is his idea:

I became firmly convinced that the traditional journal model is antiquated for sharing research and knowledge among librarians. A better course is to develop and nurture excellent blogs, with multimedia capabilities and guaranteed preservation of the postings.

David Rothman picked it up right away Monday and included the slide show that Marcus used to present his librarian blog survey results. (Yikes, my poor old Gateway takes a long time to load this page with the embedded slide show.)

T. Scott was on it by Tuesday early with Editing and Peer Review. Dean Giustini chimed in later in the day with Blogs Destabilize LIS Publishing - But Research.

Then David Rothman posted about it again later in the day with Troubled Tuesday, commenting on T. Scott and Dean Giustini and noting that LibraryStuff and LIS News had also posted the link for their readers.

Talk about a flurry of activity! Read about it yourself. What do you think?

Your intrepid blog editor thinks that for for some librarians like herself, blogs have already replaced professional journals as the primary means of "keeping up" with developments in the field. "What's the latest and how can it be useful in my library?" just cannot be answered in peer-reviewed journals. The time to publication is too long. I hate to admit it, but the latest issue of JMLA is sitting back in the office on my desk with a bookmark at the Janet Doe lecture, still waiting to be read.

I've been quite busy over the past few weeks preparing the latest issue of MIDLINE for publication. Your intrepid chapter editor has been at this for a while now. This is my fifth year as editor. And how the production of MIDLINE has changed!

Under the guidance of my predecessor Cathy Perley, MIDLINE made the transition from a print publication to an electronic one with the Spring 2003 issue. The first issue under my editorial guidance was the Winter 2004 issue. Production was labor intensive. I sent a huge text file with the edited text of the issue along with the issue photographs and typesetting suggestions to the webmaster who then drafted the issue as a webpage. After a couple of cycles of review and editing, it was ready to be announced on the chapter website. Talk about an awkward process. Eventually, I tried my hand at drafting the issue myself using FrontPage. Somehow this managed to make it even more "interesting" for the webmaster. I know just enough html to be dangerous!

Moving the chapter's web presence to a commercial vendor gave us the opportunity to produce the newsletter more efficiently. Using Movable Type as the publication platform for MIDLINE puts all of the article entry and design in the hands of the newsletter editor with a smaller workload burden on the webmaster. The text editor in MT is easy to use even for the html clueless. It is simple to insert the photographs and links. Document files can even be included as part of a story. See this story as an example. The clickable table of contents and the archives are generated automatically. All of the content is keyword searchable. The RSS feed provides an additional means of delivering the newsletter to our readers. The comments and trackback features mean that the newsletter can become more participatory and conversational. But there is some awkwardness that comes with using blogging software for publishing a "static" publication. One must be very aware of the order of story entry, for example. The first issue produced with MT, November 2006, displays in upside down order in the archival view. Oops!

The chapter also has used Movable Type to produce conference blogs for the 2006 and 2007 chapter meetings. And ConnectMidwest is the latest of the chapter's efforts to foster information sharing and communication in the Midwest Chapter.

I have been asked many times if I think there is still a need for a quarterly publication of chapter news. And my answer is an emphatic "Yes!" Having the opportunity to blog about chapter events and subjects of interest is a great service to offer our members. But there is always going to be a place for a more formal and permanent report of chapter business and activities.

P.S. Remember: You can earn 1 point toward your AHIP membership by writing a feature article for MIDLINE!

This afternoon I trekked up to our local medical college to view the MLA webcast Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices. It was nice to get the chance to do a little "in person" social networking with my fellow medical librarians as well.

The Midwest was well represented! Chapter member and MIDLINE contributor Melissa Rethlefsen was one of the presenters and our Ohio Health Sciences Libraries Association president Michelle Kraft was on the panel.

I've heard some of this before since I attended when Dale Prince presented the "Geeks Bearing Gifts" CE course in Ohio last year. But there were plenty of fresh new ideas to keep my interest. I really enjoyed the give-and-take among the panel during the question and answer segments. And I noticed that everyone got the memo explaining that if you wanted to match the coffee mugs, you should wear some blue. The kitten analogy might have gotten a little out of hand though. ;-)

There were lots of concrete examples of how medical libraries are using these new approaches to improve library services. I managed to follow most, but I have to admit that my brain blew a circuit breaker or two trying to follow the part where Melissa showed a Meebo room embedded in a wiki page. Communications Chair Karen, did you see that?? Can we try that for committee meetings? For my library, I want to investigate more of the suggested ways to use RSS feeds for pushing tables of contents and for SDI services. Look out FeedBurner, here I come!

Gotta go...have to sign up for the MLA-WEB2.0 discussion list!

Hope that all of you had an uneventful trip to Minneapolis! Did you know that Minneapolis is halfway between Los Angeles and New York City?

We invite you to JOIN IN THE FUN! Please consider becoming a ConnectMidwest contributor. Posting a story is so easy even I can do it! Contact our webmaster to get your very own username and password. Or you can just submit the copy to your intrepid blog editor and I will post it for you. And feel free to comment on any of the posts at any time. Just click on the "Comments" link at the end of any article and join in the conversation!

We asked Mary Taylor, Midwest Chapter Communications Committee member and Medical and Distance Learning Librarian at the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and here is her reply!

• IM available. Our real time virtual reference is powered by instant messaging. We have embedded a Meebo me widget on our "Ask Anything" reference page, our Blackboard/WebCt login page, and our MySpace page (see the next item). Some of our liaisons have the widget on their personal/library websites so that patrons can instant message them directly.
• Face to Space. The library has a MySpace page with an imbedded Meebo me widget and a search form for our catalog. The search form code can be downloaded by users for their own web pages from the library's website. We also have a blog on the page. Some librarians have MySpace and Facebook accounts. I am a faculty advisor for a student organization that has a Facebook account. I joined Facebook at that organization's executive board's request, so they didn't have to look up my e-mail address every time they sent out a message.
• It bloggles the mind. One of our divisions, Instructional Support Services, has an internal blog. One liaison shares news with her departments via her blog. As previously mentioned, our MySpace page also has a blogs.
• Syndicated columnist. We use an RSS feed to spread the word about services and products, and plan to use it sharing our new books list.
• Let the wiki win. Two in-house committees use wikis to share documents in progress.
• Don't blink. We are using Flickr to display photos of our ongoing building renovation.



• What does MARC say about it? We are setting up a service that allows users to send records from our catalog as text messages.


• Don't touch that dial. The library has a channel on the SIUC's student Web portal, with links to our online reference services, our catalog, our course reserves page, and our distance learning pages.


• It could be cloudy. We are investigating adding user-generated subject terms (cloud tags) to our catalog.

SO...How are the librarians and staff at YOUR library using Web 2.0 tools?

Click on the Comment link below and share your experiences!

Do you live in Facebook? Even if you only visit occasionally, join the all new Midwest Chapter Facebook group!

If you read closely there on the top of the group page, you'll see that one of the missions of the Midwest Chapter is "to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and the discussion of mutual problems and concerns." The Facebook group and this blog join the chapter discussion list and newsletter as tools that chapter members can use to communicate with each other. Whichever medium you use most, the Midwest Chapter offers a great way to network with your fellow medical librarians! Join in the discussion!

PLEASE COMMENT! How can the chapter's Facebook group page be improved? What information, widgets, or whatever can be added to make it a more useful communications tool? Click on that Comments link below and share your thoughts!

Welcome to ConnectMidwest!

What is this blog all about? Take a look! It is so much more than announcements and news. Think of this blog as a CONVERSATION among the members of the chapter on any topic of interest. Think of the blog posts as conversation starters. Click on any of the Topics for Discussion over there on the right - there's something for everyone!

How can YOU participate in the conversation?

Check out the "starter" posts then keep up with new posts by subscribing to the Recent Posts feed. And keep up with the continuing conversation by subscribing to the Recent Comments feed.

You can comment on any post by clicking on the Comments link at the end of any post. The comments are moderated and will be posted in a timely manner.

You can post an article on a news item or topic of interest. Just contact me and I'll show you how! You don't have to have your own blog to be a blogger. Become a Midwest Chapter blogger!

Join in the conversation!

I love my Christmas present iPod, but I have yet to download any music. I subscribe to a number of podcasts and listen during my daily commute. Today, on my way to Columbus for a 2009 Midwest Chapter conference planning committee meeting, I listened to last week's SirsiDynix Institute podcast Maximizing the Power of the Web: Pew Internet & American Life Project's 2007 Findings. Lee Rainie, Director Pew Internet & American Life Project reviewed the results of a their 2007 survey on how people use the internet, libraries, and government agencies when they need help. The presentation was interesting, but the very poor technical quality of the audio made listening challenging.

Although the results pertained mostly to public library use, I found two items interesting in the results. I refer you to the presentation slides for supporting numerical details. First, young adults, ages 18-29, turn to libraries for problem solving (slide 32). In my hospital, folks in this age group are my library's most frequent users -- students, residents, younger nursing staff. They are used to using the library for school and continue to turn to the library for information assistance even after graduation. Second, people who have internet access at home still use the library (slide 25). "The internet isn't your enemy, it's your ally." (slide 40)

What do you think?

Karen and I were talking about this today...

Do you subscribe to any podcasts? Do you download any library related content? Answer these questions and share your thoughts concerning podcasting and libraries by clicking on the Comments link just down there at the end of this post. Inquiring minds want to know! Really!

I must confess that at this point I am still an iPod novice user. I subscribe to a number of podcasts through iTunes and sync my cute little Nano weekly. Most of my subscriptions are for public radio programs, my current favorite being Selected Shorts. I'm just realizing that there is a whole new world out there with so much stuff that I can download. When collegian son comes home next week for the summer, I am going to have to ask him to show me how to download things into that amazing little toy without going through iTunes.

Even a quick search on iTunes leads one to much interesting library programming. Anyone out there subscribe to the MedlinePlus: NLM Director's Comments? This week's program features "Marijuana and Gum Disease." I'm going to try the the University of Arizona SIRLS podcasts and Arizona State University's Library Channel. Any other suggestions?

Are any of your libraries providing podcasts online?

In last summer's issue, MIDLINE featured an article by Carol Perryman about the Alliance Library System's project "Providing Consumer Health Outreach and Library Programs to Virtual World Residents in Second Life." Funding for the project was provided by the NN/LM Greater Midwest Region. Yesterday, she announced the publication of the project's final report on MEDLIB-L.

The report is 46 pages with lots of illustrations. And well worth the read! A lot of real people were served (via their avatars) by the project with displays, workshops and presentations, support group meetings, and even by answering old-fashioned reference questions. I had no idea! Clearly, an important need is being served.

P.S. Did you know that the way a person's avatar looks can affect real life behavior? I picked up this All Things Considered story in my feed reader last week. And I quote: "If you want to get thin, get a virtual life." It is called vicarious reinforcement. An interesting approach to weight loss!

The midwest is hosting MLA in Chicago this year. Unfortunately, your intrepid blog editor will not be attending. [Insert frowny face here.] But this is no problem! I can read all about it in my feed reader!

Of course, there is the official MLA '08 Blog itself. Lately, the entries have been posted by the Local Assistance Committee Publicity Subcommittee. Nice to see all those Midwest Chapter members contributing!

As I am sure you know by now, MLA held a little contest and chose 10 Official MLA Bloggers. The bloggers will enjoy free wireless internet access at MLA. And it looks like we are going to get some great coverage. The National Program Committee's Conference Wiki has a blog schedule page where the bloggers are signing up to cover specific parts of the conference program. You can also sign up for a digest or RSS feed of the bloggers' posts. Right now, there doesn't seem to be much else on the wiki except advertisements.

But this is even better: I have been using David Rothman's Yahoo! Pipes feed to monitor the Official MLA Blogger posts. It works well! Thank you David!

Attention Midwest Chapter Members attending MLA: please consider sharing YOUR insights, experiences, and photos here on ConnectMidwest. Contact me and I'll show you how!

And remember to tag any blog posts and photos with mla2008.

I might not be going to Chicago for MLA, but I can watch on my computer here at work. I have already signed up for the MLA '08 Plenary Webcast “Web 2.0 Tools for Librarians: Description, Demonstration, Discussion, and Debate.” To register, all you need is your handy-dandy MLA members only area username and password.

What is really great about this is that two of the scheduled presenters are Midwest Chapter members!

• Carol Jeuell, Reference Librarian, Brennemann Library, Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago


• Melissa Rethlefsen, Education Technology Librarian, Learning Resource Center, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine

Midwest rocks!

We had so much fun with Flickr at the Omaha meeting. I'm glad that MLA is encouraging people to post meeting photos to Flickr to share meeting photos. They've set up the MLA 2008 Flickr Group. There are 11 members so far. I'm looking forward to the fun.

MLA has their photo gallery up and running with 2008 meeting photos. This morning they added some photos from yesterday. MLA President and photographer extraordinarie Mark Funk is already out and about with his camera!

I haven't been completely convinced of the wonders of Twitter. However, the Chronicle's Wired Campus Newsletter had a blurb on libraries using Twitter and a link to this blog entry from College at Home: Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide.

Maybe I'll have to give it some more thought....

Brandi Tuttle sent this along:

I thought MLA should be on LinkedIn since we already have a Facebook account. So I made a space for us there! Joining will allow you to find and contact other MLA members on LinkedIn.

The goal of this group is to help members:

• Reach other members of MLA


• Accelerate careers through referrals from MLA Group members


• Know more than a name - view rich professional profiles from fellow MLA Group members

"LinkedIn is an online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries. When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments.Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you. Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals."

Just think of LinkedIn as a professional version of MySpace or Facebook. Many librarians and information professionals are already on LinkedIn. Hope to see you in the group!

I get Hardin News in my Bloglines account. They posted yesterday that the Main Library at the University of Iowa is open for business again.

The UI News Service has been posting photos on Flickr of the flooding (including great aerial shots) and campus recovery efforts. Here are the photos of the students moving the Special Collections materials hand to hand to higher ground.

Did you connect to the PubMed Search Clinic this afternoon? I didn't even need to use my phone this time around. The VoIP worked nicely. It was definitely worth the time! It saved me all that time that it would have taken me to "experiment" and figure out how things worked. Somehow I haven't had the time to try out that beta Advanced Search. So, thank you NLM for the update!

And seriously, just a few minutes before the session, I tried to show one of our residents how to use the Single Citation Matcher with our PubMed LinkOut to locate citations to see if they are available in our collection or to link through to fulltext. And his eyes just glazed over. I think that citation sensor would have been much simpler for him.