DigiCMB

Links for 2009-12-24 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-25T00:00:00-08:00

The Mobile Internet report Morgan Stanley
December 2009 Our global technology and telecom analysts set out to do a deep dive into the rapidly changing mobile Internet market. We wanted to create a data-rich, theme-based framework for thinking about how the market may develop. We intend to expand and edit the framework as the market evolves. A lot has changed since we published “The Internet Report” in 1995 on the web. We decided to create The Mobile Internet Report largely in PowerPoint and publish it on the web, expecting that bits and pieces of it will be cut / pasted / redistributed and debated / dismissed / lauded. Our goal is to get our thoughts and data into the conversation about what may be the biggest technology trend ever, one that may help make us all more informed in ways that are unique to the web circa 2009, and beyond.

How to make library users start a search : 6+ ways to search outside "native interface"

2009-12-21T22:03:00.006+01:00

If library patrons are using your expensive database interfaces for extensive search, you are fine.
If you suspect they prefer another database, that's free, fast and simple, you're in danger.
If you can prove they really use that free, fast and easy search, you're too late :-)

So, our users think our resources are not fast and not easy to use. We HOPE they know it's not free, although this perspective can go both ways in .. They might even say "Well, it's not worth the money, because of poor performance and not being user-friendly.. We like them to believe it's worth the money, because WE decided to buy it based on it's quality. If they don't think it's worth they money, how do they think about us?
Besides free, fast and easy, there some other reasons for patrons NOT to use our preferred licenced databases:

they simply don't know about them, or
they can't tell the difference or the added value for that matter
they can't find them or
they simply just don't take the effort to find them on our website when they need to search
they don't have that much time to spend on searching, or they don't want to spend that much time

We can't solve all problems in life, but we can offer users some help in starting a search at the right moment they need it, without them having to leave or drop whatever they are doing.

I will be talking about offering some ways to search in a normal users workflow platform, the browser. (So, I am not talking about integrated library tools in content management systems, or "your library"-systems, nor am i talking about possibities for offering search on the desktop or network.)
Firefox 3.5.5, Internet Explorer 8 and Chrome are discussed for obvious reasons. Internet Explorer is the most used one, Firefox the most loved one with the most options to customize and Chrome the latest and rising quickly in popularity.
Objectives to put some work into these options are:

to offer users " quickstart search"
to offer choice in search
to offer personalisation
to make them discover there is more
to make them discover librarians know really do know a lot about search :-)

QuickLinks
Offering lists and overviews of links in various forms on the library website are pretty normal. But users have to reach those pages first to be abled to use them. If you are lucky, they are clever enough to save those pages and resources they like in their Favorites or Bookmark folder. Why not offer them a Favorites or Bookmark folder from the Library to be imported in their browser? Inside a network or behind some firewalled environment, you could try and convince your it-department to push this folder as default in the default browser. This way the user does not have to worry about dead-links etc, because YOU will maintain them.

In IE and FF you can simply backup your Favourites/Bookmarks as a html file. Offer the html-file for download and users can import it into the browser.
Many people don't know about the keyboard shortcut option to copy a page to your Bookmarks/Favorites. Normally you use Ctrl-D in FF, IE and Chrome (unless you have Delicious installed as Add-on).

EAHIL Search
(Type, choose and search!)
(get the code for EAHIL Search )

Search boxes on (Library) webpages.
Whén you got the user on your website, make starting a search as easy as possible. A good way to do this is to offer them a search box, with dropdown or database choise.

Don't worry about all kinds of limits and advanced search stuff, just get them to search and take them to the native interface with a quick search start.
But still you are expecting them to come to your pages first ...

Browser search box
The search box in the right-top corner of the browser has become default in FF & IE.
What most people dón't know is that you can "manage" this box and the search engines in it! Even users without admin rights can add, edit and remove search engines. Seems like a good idea to explain people how this works and how they can create their own lists of engines.
Here is how to do it.

Firefox: Click the little dropdown icon right next to the icon of the searchbox. (This icon tells you which search engines is now active. Mind you this is not the same as the Default Search Engine, later more on this) Go to "Manage Search engines". You can re-arrange them, remove or use "Get More Search Engines"

Browse through more search engines at mycroft.mozdev.org.
Have a look at some of mine
Check out all the libraries that made stuff like this!
Learn how to make your own at the Mozilla Developer Center.
You could offer users these search plugins from your library website, if your cms/website "allows" this. (And again within a network environment, you could consider offering them by default in the browser your organisation uses)

Firefox got tons of options to customize your browser using these add-ons and plugins. There are even add-ons that change/alter/enrich your database result pages automagically when installed , GreaseMonkey (see available scripts concerning PubMed) & the I-Cite plugin
There is also the Add To Search add-on for Firefox that puts those search engines that support OpenSearch into the Search Bar with a simply click.

Internet Explorer 8
Go to the dropdown icon right next to the little magnifying glass and choose "Manage Search Providers". This will take you to the Manage Add-on feature from IE8. This version has about the same options.

Search Providers
"Accelerators" This is a new feature in IE, and works almost similar to the FF add-ons. I like the option to select text on the page to make the Accelerator button appear. Clicking on that, you get offered to do something with the selected text.
(For search, i prefer the solution from Conduit Toolbars to put selected text right away into the search box.)
Toolbars and Add-ons

Chrome
Google Chrome has no searchbox.

They made the address bar the default searchbox. Just type your keywords in the address bar and hit Enter. And this completely fits in the growing trend on the web to make search possible from anywhere, in anything, at any time.
Selected text can also be searched with a right click menu-option. This triggers the default search engine set in Chrome.
To manage these search engines in Chrome you go to the "Tools" icon; then Options; Basics. You can not manually add search engines to Chrome, but this is greatly compensated with the following:
Chrome will automatically add search engines to the collection of engines that can be used. Just activate a search engine once in Chrome and check the Manage-option. When the search engine supports OpenSearch it will be added to the list.

Address bar Searching

Can you think of something even more easier? Just typing in that bar?
In FF and IE you can activate this as well by setting the Default Search engine. Changing the default search engine of the search box, also changes this for the address bar.

Library toolbar add-on

a Library can install all its major search engines into a Toolbar (i.e. by Conduit) and offer it to users for download in FF and IE. It can be one Toolbar or a range of Toolbars grouped in one, with a toggle-option like the NLM Toolbar (combines 9 toolbars of NLM/NCBI major resources!)
Conduit Toolbars offer -besides addres bar searching- also putting any selected text straight into the search box.
Users have many ways to customize their Library Toolbar (read this post about 37+ ways)
Libraries can created search & news components easily with the Add gadgets function that accepts codes & scripts in an easy copy & paste way. The Conduit platform powered with Netvibes functionality offers a great way to ensure that library content and services can be offered and distributed in an easy and quick way for many other platorms.
For Toolbar Users: Users of the toolbars are offered a Add Stuff button [+] at the right end of the toolbar.
Marketplace 68.000 components by others toolbar admins and a very substantial amount of Netvibes widgets from Netvibes own widget marketplace Eco.netvibes.com
Search for Toolbar components (for toolbar users and other interested people)

Search boxes (html) BASED on Conduit Toolbars.
These boxes offer a top frame with resources for follow-up quick search.
Try the EAHIL search box in this post and see for yourself. Users can see other available databases and search them without having to re-type the keywords.

Advice to Use a Personal Toolbar: Google Toolbar
The Google Toolbar is the best toolbar for personal use, offering loads of functionality and interoperability with your browser and the web.Add search engines on the fly to your own Toolbar. Click-Right inside the search box of the search engine that you want to add. Choose: Generate Custom Search. You will be offered to add a custum button to your toolbar. Searching in this search engine again can be started just by typing in search term in the google search box ánd hitting the newly added button. Just clicking the button (without any search terms) will take you to the right website.

Users can create their own collection of search options in the toolbar.
Libraries can create Search Buttons of their resources for the Google Toolbar, Directory
Libraries can create Gadgets and Submit them in the Toolbar Button Gallery .
If you have created Google gadgets before, you can just enter their url's.
See some examples for Pubmed (look for the :-)

Most important for all these options, is to let your users know about them and to let them FIND them on the web. Take any opportunity you have, in your user contacts, to listen to what they want and "show off" on these helpful tools and tips.

Please let me know what other ways of easy search-start in the browser I have missed.

IPC EAHIL2010 Meeting in Lisbon

2009-12-20T22:41:00.002+01:00

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Get this widget at roytanck.com

The IPC of the EAHIL2010 Conference did meet in Lisabon, Portugal on December 14-15th. On the agenda: abstract grading, presentation schedules, Continuing Education, poster sessions, venue exploration etc.
The local programm committee did an enormous job preparing almost everything in a proposed agenda and conference schedule. It is amazing how much has to be done to run a conference of this size.
While we were dining in Restaurant Valbom, close to our hotel Sana Executive, they were probably still preparing for our arrival on Monday morning.
The meeting was hosted in the facilities of Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian surrounded by a wonderful garden Jardim Calouste Gulbenkian.
After a little slow start on grading and discussing the large amount of abstracts for papers and posters (140+), we managed to finish them all at the end of the 1st day!
It was an honour to be invited for diner that evening at the famous Fado Maior
(good traditional food with fado music). The guitar players were great and the singers, especially
Julieta Estrela were impressive.
I am sure some IPC members took audio recordings, as I did. (What kind of tool can we use to share audio-files between EAHIl-members?)
The second days work consisted of discussing and settling the final arrangements on the CEC's, the chairs, choosing keynote speakers and the social agenda. This we could all arrange in the morning, which gave us time to have a quick visit to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.
I was amazed about this special collection, saw some awesome Rembrandts and wonderful Lalique items.
The afternoon was reserved for a visit to the Conference venue, the Estoril Congress Center.
The travel alone to this venue by public transport was an adventure :-).
The 12th EAHIL Conference "DISCOVERING NEW SEAS OF KNOWLEDGE : Technologies, environments and users in the future of health libraries" will take place in two place: Lisbon for the Continuing Eduction Courses and Estoril for the actual Conference. Imagine June 2010, close to the beach, in a sub-tropical environment...
I thought about that the next morning, when I had 2 hours off before flying back and had to walk in ..... the rain to visit Lisbon city. Unlucky, but overall it was a very good meeting.
See my pictures at the EAHIL2010 Flickr Pool

Links for 2009-12-17 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-18T00:00:00-08:00

Does Social Media Help or Hinder Productivity? - FP Posted
Does the use of social media in the workplace benefit organizations and educational institutions and help productivity or hamper productivity? That's a question many leaders and educators are debating in organizations, even while students and employees immerse themselves in social media for both personal and business purposes. This article will examine both sides of the question, and show how it's clearly connected to a much bigger question of organizational change.

Links for 2009-12-11 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-12T00:00:00-08:00

PurpleSearch RUG interview

NARCIS included NIVEL, Dutch Institute for Research of Health Care

2009-12-11T16:16:00.000+01:00

NARCIS, the gateway to the Dutch Scientific information (National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System) has included a new repository: the repository of the NIVEL: the Dutch Institute for research of health care. It concerns about 2500 open access publications, that is 40% of the publications of NIVEL.

"NARCIS provides access to 381,311 scientific publications (191,575 of which are open access publications), 8,930 data sets, and information on researchers (expertise), research projects and research institutes in the Netherlands"
It will be developed within the framework of SURFShare, in close cooperation with the Dutch universities and NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).

37 Repositories are now included in NARCIS.

MYCROFT SEARCH PLUGIN
As of now a so-called NARCIS search plugin is available for the Internet Explorer and Firefox browser at the Mycroft Project page: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=narcis

The search plugin was created on site via the easy submissions utility .
Use the Show Full instructions for extra info. Constructing the search string for NARCIS was easy: http://www.narcis.info/search/?query={searchTerms}
The favicon (the little icon showed in the search box) of Narcis was captured via http://www.getfavicon.org/

Scopus as Theme for Library Outreach Meeting

2009-12-11T15:34:00.002+01:00

The library organised a open meeting for staff of the UMCG on December 7th, focussed around the scientific database SCOPUS.
The audience (53) -mainly researchers and a few clinicians, but also a couple of librarians of the Library of the University of Groningen. (we simply couldn't keep them out of the room :-)- were gathered in the so-called "Rode Zaal".
Presenter was Chris James, Account Development Manager at Elsevier.
In his first session he covered the basics of Scopus and tried to get some response from the audience. Some remarkable responses:

"who is using Scopus?" : no hands. (Scopus became available at the University in the second part of 2008)
"Web of Science" : no hands

Comment: Clinical and medical research staff is using Pubmed heavily. Database choices and search habits are hard to influence and change takes time. We probably also got a relative "new" group of researchers. And still a lot of work to do as library in reaching out.
The Scopus presentation is available below.

Scopus Intro 2009 Groningen

View more documents from Centrale Medische Bibliotheek, Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen (UMCG).

Before the break I then did a 30 minute demo of library services, resources and new tools.

Demo CMB : services and tools

View more presentations from Guus van den Brekel.

My talk: library services and resources, workshops, support for research, toolbar, off-campus access, library toolbox: Netvibes public page, RSS, PurpleSearch
Remarkable: no hands on using Facebook or Hyves, 100% using Pubmed, 50% Google Scholar,

Interesting links:

JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool
"This site from JISC Collections aims to help libraries to make informed decisions about future subscriptions to bibliographic and full text databases. More information about the site's data sourcing and comparison method is available on the 'About' page."
Medical RSS sites:

MedWorm
FeedNavigator Terkko
RSS4Medicics: http://www.rss4medics.com/
TicTocs: http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/

SCImago Journal & Country Ranking

Links for 2009-12-08 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-09T00:00:00-08:00

JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool
JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) This site from JISC Collections aims to help libraries to make informed decisions about future subscriptions to bibliographic and full text databases. More information about the site's data sourcing and comparison method is available on the 'About' page.

Links for 2009-12-06 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-07T00:00:00-08:00

SWIB09 - Semantic Web in Bibliotheken I Fachtagung für innovative Bibliothekare
Am 24. und 25. November 2009 richten das Hochschulbibliothekszentrum des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen (hbz) und die Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft (ZBW) eine Tagung zum Thema Semantic Web in Bibliotheken aus. Diese Tagung will Antworten liefern auf Fragen wie * "Was ist eigentlich das Semantic Web und was ist Linked Data?" * "Warum sollten/müssen sich Bibliotheken damit überhaupt befassen?" * "Wie können sich Bibliotheken im Semantic Web engagieren?"
10 Web trends to watch in 2010 - CNN.com
(CNN) -- As 2009 draws to a close, the Web's attention turns to the year ahead. What can we expect of the online realm in 2010? While Web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are becoming apparent. Expect the following 10 themes to define the Web next year:

To tweet or not to Tweet : exploring the role of social media for (public) health

2009-12-05T10:20:00.001+01:00

A lot of useful information about the role social media is playing now related somehow to the (public) health. If you got no vision on social media versus health or health care, this is the presentation to watch.

To tweet or not to tweet? : Exploring the use of Social Media for [public] health

View more presentations from Francisco J Grajales III.

How to make and maintain a Library Twitter account : get your content out there!

2009-11-29T15:24:00.001+01:00

It's a few weeks now since I have launched the cmbUMCG twitter account (in Dutch). The reasons for this were:

to start to focus more in Dutch on our target groups,
to find out if they are out there tweeting too, and why
to keep up with tweets about UMCG: staff, students, patients, and news flashes published by third parties
to explore how to get parts of our content and services in there, without having to invest a lot of extra staff time for maintenance and updating
to show that the library is using this channel too, to show ourselves and the UMCG.

Creation of the account is pretty simple of course via Twitter. Be sure to find a nice logo and background. There are several sites that offer simple free templates for twitter backgrounds (i.e. http://www.twitbacks.com/), or you create your own.

To get relevant content into your Twitter Library account you need:

active library staff that tweet about news on any aspect of library services and resources. You can can also include news about your organisation.

Sending tweets can be done from the basic Twitter-site or from one of the many Twitter apps that are available. The most complete overview of twitter apps can be found at The Twitter Fan Wiki. My personal favourite is Tweetdeck. This allows me to scan many subjects by ways of searchstrategies. Tweetdeck can handle many twitteraccounts at the same time and has great exchange options with Facebook and MySpace.
a great set of RSS feeds from your Library services and resources.

I used Twitterfeed to get RSS-feeds into the cmbUMCG Library Twitter account. Twitterfeeds works as a mash-up for RSS-feeds and Twitter. It merges several feeds into one Twitter account with nice options to add and finetune the published tweet i.g. with pre-fixes to show the origin of the source. (As far as I know Twitterfeed is the only tool to merge feeds into a Twitter account. Please tell me if I am wrong.)

The first 3 feeds in this list are pretty straight forward RSS-feeds coming from our own website and systems. The Pubmed feed is a saved search for all possible address variations of the UMCG, turned into RSS by Pubmed..

Feedscrapers
For the last three resources (UMCG News & Events & Polsslag) there was NO RSS-feed available, simply because the UMCG website does not support it.
I used the free version of Feedity to "scrape" the content of the relevant pages in that UMCG-site. Feedity lets you turn max 10 pages into rss-feeds. The pages you want turn into a feed need to be build-up in a structured way of course, to let the tool discover new content items. Feedity offers an easy way of refining the rss output by defining the parameters for title and description extraction in html/xml. (Read more about Feedscrapers in a previous post on Feedscrapers.)

Feedburner
After creating the feeds, I run the feeds throught Feedburner to :

be abled to track clickthroughs and subscribers
to optimize them for maximum compatibility
to add some options for interactivity into each content item for subscribers, like Send to Email, Delicious, Share in Facebook.

These Feedburner feeds are entered into Twitterfeed. After that it runs itself :-)
To ensure coverage in our other social media, I made sure that our Library Facebook Fan Page ánd the Group Page are connected to the Twitterfeed. We also push the Twitterfeed to the UMCG & CMB Linkedin Groups and our Hyves. And finally the cmbUMCG Twitterfeed gets published as a great widget in the Conduit Library Toolbars, QuickSearchCMB and CMB Student
Followers
Next thing we need to do is get more followers. Tweetdeck shows us- based on a saved search -constantly all tweets mentioning the UMCG. The principle of following anybody that seems to have any relation with the UMCG, as patient, student, staff or otherwise, has resulted in 78 Followers so far, but it is growing steadily. People follow back most of the time.
To get more followers: get your account listed in twitter directories and to the relatively new Listorious "The Directory of awesome Twitter lists".

Scanning the tweets on UMCG resulted in being aware of new press releases béfore they were announced on the UMCG website. In these cases we publish/retweet this on the Library cmbUMCG account and as a consequense also on all social media connected.

Link Module from Netvibes Changed : Thumbnail ON of OFF

2009-11-18T10:55:00.001+01:00

On some of our Public Pages, like CMB and EduCMB we placed several Link Modules to show links to content on the website of our library. The Link Module then displays a Thumbnail from that page/site.

A few day ago suddenly the thumbnails for links within the www.rug.nl domain were replaced with little indecent pictures, clearly not coming from this university portal.
Quick contact with Netvibes, resulted in quick action: they decided to block thumbnails for www.rug.nl at once, and investigate. My question to them : is the rug-site hijacked or the Thumbshots.org-site?
The outcome is still unsure, they now noticed trouble with Thumbshots and Google Groups as well.
They DID act quickly again in adjusting the Link Module: you now can turn the Thumbnail ON or OFF!.

Links for 2009-11-03 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-04T00:00:00-08:00

http://www.webcropsweekly.com/WebCropsLast.htm
This site lists the Internet resources, software, search engines etc. which the author finds the most useful. The idea is to present with a short description only the arguably very best findings in various categories. Friedhelm Rump

The Google Wave directory of helpful waves!

2009-10-29T11:51:00.001+01:00

In my attempt to keep up with emerging technologies I could not forget Google Wave of course. Finally I got an account and am now exploring the possibilities. Helpfull in this were a couple of specific public waves:

The Google Wave Directory of helpful waves (you need a GW account to access the waves)

Links:

ABCs of Wave

Comprehensive Google Wave Extensions List

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

Google Wave From The Start - Tips for new users and beginners

Google Wave on the iPhone/iPod Touch

Google Wave: :SUGGESTIONS:

How are you managing your inbox?

How To Make *GROUP* Waves RELOADED/ RIP Public?

HTML Gadget - Add HTML to your Wave

iGoogle Gadgets That Work Inside Wave

Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Wave.

SHOW OFF YOUR GADGETS - provide the URL

Official DC, VA, MD Wave

Wave Extensions/Plugins/Whatnot

Wave Guide Discussion 0.0

Wave Guide: Waves Greatest Hits

Welcome to Google \/\/ave

Links for 2009-10-28 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

Exploring the serious uses of virtual worlds | Metanomics
Virtual Worlds and Public Health by Robert Bloomfield If you are an educator, or have kids in school, you are probably hearing a lot about h1n1, otherwise known as swine&

A Getsatisfaction widget on your Netvibes public page

2009-10-06T12:38:00.000+02:00

I really love the Google Toolbar Page Translate option ... This way I was abled to read the Hungarian Netvibes public page from http://www.netvibes.com/ovidspclassroom. The owner -Edit Csajbok
Semmelweis University Central Library- wanted to know how to put a GetSatisfaction widget in there, like we use at http://www.netvibes.com/cmb.
I have put the code in a Google doc to share.

Libraries leveraging Facebook and Twitter

2009-10-06T09:44:00.000+02:00

#midwestmla09 is the hash tag for the Midwest MLA 2009 conference. I wish more of that conference was openly available (yet). Or at least to be found. Why not use the same tag in Slideshare?

Here are two talks for now:

Libraries Leveraging Facebook And Twitter

View more presentations from Michelle Kraft.

And:
M Health Sciences Libraries (M for Mobile) by Eric Schnell at #MidwestMLA09. Why not embed & share? http://bit.ly/113Hm5 It's a great presentation;-)

Netvibes powers Conduit : a strong partnership

2009-10-04T23:51:00.000+02:00

Conduit Open
Just a few days ago I took a deeper look at Conduit Open. Not because I have any shares in the company, but because we as library are using the tool for years now, as well as Netvibes. And to my surprise, it now looks they both started working very closely together!
Conduit Open is a beta version of a marketplace for toolbar components.It was launched a couple of months ago.
For Toolbar Creators
Basically they implemented a way for toolbar owners [you cant call them developers as creating a toolbar is made dead simple] to SHARE not the toolbar itself, but the seperate toolbar elements, menu*s and buttons. (Hélas not the searchbox with all the library custom searches.)

Admins find a share-option in the edit-mode of the toolbar at each element. This way the component gets published in the Marketplace, available for all.
Admins can also choose to search for new components in the Marketplace when logged-in. This Search service offers móre information about the components compared to the search version for "normal users & everybody else". Like the total amount of 64.114 components( October 4th 2009), a rating system, some stats, a preview options and their origin. It was here that I noticed that a very substantial amount of the components actually come from Netvibes own widget "marketplace" Eco-netvibes.com, but not all , as Netvibes holds 185.047 widgets today.
I would like to know how they selected those components ... To my surprise all my own created Netvibes widgets can be found in this Conduit Marketplace.
Components added by admins are visible right away for all Toolbar users.
In the Marketplace Tab you can also find the 2Go-option.
"Each 2go button represents one piece of content or one application, which you can then add easily to any page of your website using basic code. When a visitor comes to your website they can click on your 2go button and your stuff will be added to their branded toolbar if it is powered by the Conduit platform. And if the visitor does not have a community toolbar, then they will be prompted to add your free toolbar to their browser" (See the example of the PubMed News Button from the Pubmed Toolbar in the rightmenu of this blog.)
Libraries can created search & news components easily with the Add gadgets function that accepts codes & scripts in an easy copy&paste way. The Conduit platform powered with Netvibes functionality offers a great way to ensure that library content and services can be offered and distributed in an easy and quick way for many other platorms.

For Toolbar Users
Users of the toolbars are offered a Add Stuff button [+] at the right end of the toolbar.
Marketplace 68.000 components by others toolbar admins and a very substantial amount of Netvibes widgets from Netvibes own widget marketplace Eco.netvibes.com
Search for Toolbar components (for toolbar users and other interested people)

All Netvibes component show, when opened in a Toolbar the Netvibes share button, and the text

It takes users to the eco-netvibes widget page where they can choose to install the widget in Netvibes, iGoogle, Apple Dashboard, Opera, Vista & Windows Live.

Components added this way are only visible for the individual Toolbar user.

37 ways To Adjust Your Library Toolbar (or any Conduit Toolbar)

2009-10-03T11:10:00.004+02:00

Re-post from : LibraryToolbar.blogspot.com.
Here are just a few ways you can ADJUST your Library Toolbar once you have chosen to use it.
I am making this overview because the people creating this free toolbar software (Conduit) keep improvingand adding new ways of adjusting the toolbars to give users more possibilities. The examples given are from the NLM Toolbar.

During installation you can choose to add 3 personalised buttons to your toolbar (See the picture):

Email-notifier (to get notified of new email on multiple accounts)
Weather button (To see current and predicted Weather in specific location)
Radio-button (To select your own preferences in web-radio ánd to listen to added podcasts via RSS). The NLM Radioplayer contains the podcasts of the NLM Director Comments on MedlinePlus & the NIH Podcast.
(These buttons can at all times be de-activated or actived later on)

You can choose to set the customized websearch from the toolbar as your default search. It makes any search entered in the top-right searchbox (and from the address-bar) run through a Google-powered searchengine. This sounds good, but my advice is NOT to select this option. In my opinion the Google-powered Conduit search is the weakest spot from their toolbar-solution.
You could also set your homepage to this customized web search page, but again, this is not as strong as the normal Google search.
The NLM Toolbar is currently a set of 9 toolbars focussing on NLM services. You can at time toggle between the following toolbars. (NLM, PubMed, PubMedCentral, MedlinePlus, ClinicalTrials, DrugInfo, AidsInfo, DailyMed, HouseholdProducts) This group-function saves a lot of screen space. You just see one toolbar, but can have the power of 9. An edit-options to remove toolbars is available.
(NLM Toolbars Blog, install toolbar)
If you find any other Conduit Toolbar on the web, an easy Add To Your Toolbars function will ask you if you want to enclose the new toolbar together with the NLM toolbars.
Extensive options to adjust the Toolbar can be found right next to the NLM-logo
Very useful is the SHRINK TOOLBAR toggle option. It takes away all texts next to the buttons, using less space.
Toolbar Options:
1. Personal Components
2. Predefined Components : If you do not want to use some elements of the NLM Toolbar, you can simply de-select them.
3. Useful Components
4. My Stuff
  
  To be abled to add `my own` stuff is one of the most heared request from our many toolbar users. And now Conduit offers this. They made it easy to create toolbar content (more on this, xml-menu's and html gadgets later on) ánd implemented a way to SHARE this through Conduit Open. These elements can be added and removed through the My Stuff-menu.
5. Additional Settings (to select or de-select) :
To complete this long list of options to adjust your Toolbar two small but again useful tips:

you can adjust the size of the NLM search box (the most important toolbar element with 35+ search options from the NLM!) by simply sliding it to the desired size.
At all times you can make the toolbar disappear (or appear again) via the menu View; Toolbars.

New PubMed Design Preview (Search added to PubMed Toolbar)

2009-09-30T08:39:00.001+02:00

Today the url of the preview for new Pubmed design came out: http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Enough changes to be very interesting, and to be added as search to the Pubmed Toolbar: http://pubmed.ourtoolbar.com

(re-post from NLM Toolbars)

emerging technologies in academic libraries : EMTACL10

2009-09-25T11:16:00.005+02:00

emtacl10 — emerging technologies in academic libraries
International conference on emerging technologies in academic libraries 2010 26–28 April 2010, Trondheim, Norway
http://www.emtacl.com/

Call for papers
The Programm committee would like to remind you that the deadline for submitting abstracts is Thursday 15 October.

We are also happy to announce Lorcan Dempsey as opening keynote speaker at the conference. Lorcan is Vice President and Chief Strategist of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), and needs no further introduction.
Emerging technologies and evolving user behaviour change the rules of the game for academic libraries. Emerging technologies include new ways of using existing technologies and totally new, disruptive technologies.

Abstract submission instructions:
Please use the submission form at https://www.easychair.org/login.cgi?conf=emtacl10

Do Libraries Meet Research 2.0: Liber 2009: ‘Innovation through Collaboration’

2009-09-11T11:29:00.002+02:00

After a long period of relative silence on this blog I am trying to clear up at least the loose-ends ... and update the stuff out there, when time & energy permits. I had not posted my talk from Liber2009, almost 2 months ago. Have a look at the video’s of the conference on line: http://www.canalc2.tv/evenements.asp?idEvenement=481 More LIBER2009 presentations available from: http://liber2009.biu-toulouse.fr/presentations

Do Libraries Meet Research 2.0 : collaborative tools and relevance for Research Libraries

View more presentations from Guus van den Brekel.

Providing and managing evidence based health information

2009-08-07T14:42:00.003+02:00

Here is some extra info on the Continuing education courses and workshop for medical librarians held in St. Petersburg at the Library of Medical Academy of Postgraduate Studies. Transfer of knowledge VIII: Providing and managing evidence based health information, June 16-18, 2009 The courses were made possible thanks to grants from SMH and the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services through the Cooperation Programme on Health and Related Social Issues in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. BMJ and Ovid have also sponsored this year's project.

Presentations in pdf:

Getting Clinical Evidence into Practice. BMJ Clinical Evidence and BMJ Best Practice. Steve Thorpe, BMJ
The Role of Patient Information in Evidence Based Medicine. Eva Alopaeus
SMIL Patient Information Database . Tiina Heino
Free Medical Resources on the Internet (in Russian). List Velta Poznaka
Google Scholar – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Elisabeth Akre
PubMed news. Astrid Müller
The Transfer of Knowledge Project:
- The Lithuanian Experience. Jurate Stukiene
- The Russian Experience. Larisa Zmykhova/ Elena Tikhomirova
- Leningrad Regional Scientific Medical Library in the Project "Transfer of Knowledge" Tamara Monakova / Natalia Zubina
Managing References. Exercises Tiina Heino
Open Access:
- Open Repositories / Open Access. Arne Jakobsson
- Russian Consortium. Ekaterina Polnikova
- Open Access initiatives and situation in the Baltic Countries. Meile Kretaviciene
Russian Library Association: Section of medical and hospital libraries (in Russian). Julija Dresher
Ovid presentation. Jørn Hope
Web Technologies for Libraries. Workshop. Karen Buset and Guus van den Brekel
- Web site
- Blog Web Technologies for (med) Libraries
Semantic Web. Ioana Robu
The CISMeF project: Catalog and Index of French-language Health Internet Resources: a quality-controlled subject gateway Benoit Thirion
Cluj New Medical Library. Ioana Robu

Complete programme (pdf) Participants (pdf)

Nordic Baltic Association for Medical and Health Information.

See my pics from St Petersburg and the event.

Second Life: The Key to Futuristic Communication and Patient Care Health Care Collaboration & Community in Virtual Worlds & Second Life

2009-06-15T15:41:00.002+02:00

June 16 (Tuesday) 1:30 pm SLT-2:15pm http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/54/169/22/
Health Care New Media Marketing Conference: Connecting to Consumer's in Today's Healthcare Environment

Second Life: The Key to Futuristic Communication and Patient Care
Health Care Collaboration & Community in Virtual Worlds & Second Life

Second only to the general concept of Web 2.0, virtual worlds are the source of more articles in PubMed than any other emerging social technology.
Of the many virtual worlds, Second Life (a free, open source 3d virtual world platform) is the one with the strongest presence in health care communities, from patient groups and medical education to research and professional meetings.
Second Life can enable health systems to create either public or secure private spaces for functions from patient education, outreach, staff training, remote meetings, or more. As with any social technology, understanding the context and norms of the online space are essential to making institutional engagement a success.
In this session, we will look at case studies illustrating how some organizations have used Second Life for communication, collaboration and community engagement.

Perplexity Peccable, also known as Patricia Anderson, is the Emerging Technologies Librarian for the Health Sciences at the University of Michigan, focusing on social technologies and Science 2.0.
In this role she serves as the community manager for Wolverine Island, the University's home in Second Life.
Ms. Anderson is also the senior author of the Medical Library Association Encyclopedic Guide to Searching and Finding Health Information on the Web, with significant expertise in systematic review methodologies.
Taken from email of Patricia F. Anderson To SL & HealthCare Google List

Taskforce Web 2.0 EAHIL Startup!

2009-05-23T17:52:00.000+02:00

The latest issue of the Journal of Eahil contains an article called : Working, Sharing, Communicating, Learning and Teaching with others : the use of Web 2.0 tools for EAHIL Council, Board and Members. The original proposal was written in Januari 2009 by Guus van den Brekel, Ronald van Dieën, Oliver Obst and put to the EAHIL Board in Februari. You can read the edited version for the JEAHIL just below in the first post of this blog. (It is showing a pdf version in a "social publishing tool" called Scribd) This is what we finally are trying to achieve: "The proposal envisioned the following environment where

appropriate social networking tools for EAHIL members and member organisations are introduced, explained and discussed to understand how useful some of these technologies can be in libraries.
experiences and reviews of different tools are gathered and published. Aspects to enclose are local differences and trends between EAHIL countries, to learn what the applied use and benefits could be for any medical library, it's staff and its customers/patrons. (Comparable to Library Success Wiki)
EAHIL members are offered the possibility to explore and play with new technologies, as this is the best way to embrase and actually engage.
Working, Sharing, Communicating, Learning and Teaching from and with eachother, can be supported."

The Taskforce Blog will be a central point where new developments will be discussed and published. A place to get into contact with the Taskforce members and others. Like a regular web 2.0 tool, the blog is in a permanent beta-state. Content and layout will change over time. Tools to get into touch, email, chat etc will be implemented. We need to know what YOU (as EAHIL member) think about all this. As part of the research we will start short polls to gather information about related topics. We are happy to announce that two new members have joined the Taskforce:

Katri Larmo: Information Specialist at National Library of Health Sciences - Terkko and
Kate Kelly: Chief Librarian at Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. The other members are:
Oliver Obst: Library Director Zweigbibliothek Medizin, Universitaets- & Landesbibliothek, Muenste, Germany

Lotta Haglund: Head of Information and Public Relations at

Karolinska Institutet

Karolinska Institutet is one of Europe's largest medical universities. It is also Sweden´s largest centre for medical training and research. Our mission is to improve the health of mankind through ... More »

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Karolinska Institutet, University Library

Benoit Thirion: Medical Librarian at Rouen University Hospital
Guus van den Brekel: Medical Information Specialist at University Medical Center Groningen, Central Medical Library

Education and Teaching in Second Life

2009-05-23T17:14:00.003+02:00

Image by testdriverone via Flickr

I wrote a Dutch article about Education and Teaching in SL about 6 weeks ago, focussing on the Kamimo project, http://kamimo-islands.blogspot.com/ It was published in a new journal on digital libraries, http:/digbib.nl For all of you who strangly enough do NOT read Dutch that easily... Here is the automated translation of it via Google Translate at Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/15729296/Education-and-Teaching-in-Second-Life I have no time to do a proper translation sorry. (Alliance Library Systems and Infoisland Archipelago is mentioned of course!) I also wrote a book review, also in Dutch on the excellent book

Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life

by Judith Molka-Danielsen and Mats Deutschmann (eds.) http://butikk.tapirforlag.no/en/node/1195 People from Kamimo continued working in a new project together with University of Manchester. The AVALON Project EU funded AVALON is a 2-year project to explore the potential of langugage learning in Second Life. The AVALON Project (Ignite Presentation)

Medical Libraries using LibGuides : various approaches

2009-05-15T12:14:00.003+02:00

springshare: @digicmb - here are lists of medical libraries (http://bit.ly/1NFyj) and hospitals (http://bit.ly/3g4km) using LibGuides
It started with a Tweet on wanting to know who was using LibGuides in Medical Libraries. At the University of Groningen the libraries are working on making SUBJECT GUIDES with LibGuides and I thought the fastest way to find out what and where was a quick Tweet.
Of course I should have searched for myself IN LibGuides to find out, but this way was more easier, and I believe using the contacts in Twitter makes it possible to get móre than just the links and recieve also experiences and comments. Other also now know I am working on that in Groningen...

The use is very different. Some actually look a bit like Netvibes Universes, but without the sharing part and with the option of moving stuff around of course for the users. Here is one from Becker Medical Library on Medical Podcasts

A really nice well-filled example of a Subject Guide (but they call if Research Tools ...) for Medical Students can be found at http://guides.mclibrary.duke.edu/medstudents

The Dental Medicine Subject Guide from the Harvard Medical School is great, and shows a nice mix of library related services for Dentistry, the use of resources, news, books, specialities, although you might think that users could get lost in the great amount of data.

The very large amount of subject guides were created by by the staff of the Norris Medical Library "Subject Guides: Research assistance and useful resources" (49 guides!)

There is use of the LibGuides as support for education, classes, seperate studies of focus groups: Here is one from Himmelfarm Health Sciences Library on History of Epidemics.

“Share the Health: Training People with Disabilities and Chronic Medical Conditions on How to Locate Quality Health Information

2009-05-15T09:23:00.007+02:00

Image by testdriverone via Flickr

Must really get back into writing posts... I blame Twitter.. I think it's marvellous but it takes away the edge a little bit to write on the blogs about it again.. This you must read! Virtual Ability has the absolute best and most beautiful Orientation Isand to learn getting around in Second Life.

Alliance Library System is pleased to make the final report for the project “Share the Health” available on the web at http://www.alliancelibrarysystem.com/pdf09/Sharethehealthfinalreportmay2009.pdf.

This project was funded with a contract from the National Library of Medicine Greater Midwest Region.

“We are very pleased that this project accomplished so much in terms of helping people with disabilities and chronic health conditions learn where to find credible health information and also how to navigate the virtual world of Second Life,” stated Kitty Pope, ALS Executive Director. “Much of this population is homebound and virtual worlds give them the opportunity to experience things they would not otherwise get to do.”

Virtual Ability, the new orientation center for people with these conditions in Second Life, was partially funded through this project. Virtual Ability was a recent co-winner of the prestigious Linden Prize with Studio Wikitecture. There were over 230 entries and this is the first vendor award of its type in virtual worlds.

“The many library services available in Second Life increase it’s utility for people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. The resources on HealthInfo Island are particularly pertinent,” stated Alice Krueger, president of Virtual Ability, Inc. “ We were pleased to partner with ALS in developing the intake and new resident orientation facilities on Virtual Ability Island, adjoining HealthInfo Island on the east.”

They also have created a Netvibes Universe Public Page : Share The Health VAI ALS

Here is an impression!

Image by testdriverone via Flickr

Acutezorg.nl : Dutch knowledge portal for Acute Care

2009-03-29T15:03:00.003+02:00

At the Zorg 2.0 Event on March 24th the website of the Dutch knowledge portal for acute care was launched called AcuteZorg.nl.
AcuteZorg.nl wants to exchange knowledge and information among professionals, foster care, by providing a digital platform with reliable information. In addition the aim is to introduce the possibilities of new media to health care professionals. One part of the site is under the tab "Library".
Here is some translated info about this library:
The website www.acutezorg.nl/bibliotheek is the result of a partnership between the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, UMC Utrecht (Julius Centrum voor Gezondheidswetenschappen en Eerstelijns Geneeskunde, UMC Utrecht) and the Dutch Knowledge Center, Primary Care Centers and Acute Care, (Nederlands Kenniscentrum Huisartsenposten en Spoedzorg), UMC St Radboud in Nijmegen.
Both organizations have scientific expertise in the field of emergency and acute care on general items, ambulance services and emergency assistance. The library is to give an overview of relevant references of scientific and "gray" literature (reports, reports, etc.) in this area. Objective scientific knowledge is central and available online for each profession involved in the spoedzorg chain.

Below you will see a widget about AcuteZorg.nl to be embedded in your website, blog, social network or personal startpage (we advice Netvibes.com. For people who like Google there is also a Google gadget with tabs available.

AcuteZorg.nlgreat free widgetsWidgetbox

Practicing Medicine in the web 2.0 Era : Bertalan Mesko (Berci)

2009-03-28T13:18:00.003+01:00

Practicing Medicine in the Web 2.0 Era

View more presentations from Bertalan Mesko.

Bertalan Mesko (Berci), founder of ScienceRoll

2009-03-26T00:10:00.006+01:00

Image by testdriverone via Flickr

I had the honour to meet Bertalan Mesko this week at the Zorg 2.0 conference in Nijmegen. The 24-year old medical Hungarian student and internet entrepreneur with Webicina.com.
The medical library world knows him as the person behind ScienceRoll, one of the most read medical blogs about web 2.0 and the mash-up with health care.
He spoke about the use of communities for professionals in health care. With the use of Second Life as educational tool, the experience of two communities and how the training can be embedded.
It is his aim to help medical professionals and patients enter the web 2.0 era by providing them with e-courses, consulting and personalized packages. First ones he launced are Diabetes and Depression.
Berci is also responsible for the web 2.0 meta medical search engine you can see in the left menu of this blog.
One the useful tools to help professionals to keep up to date is his PeRSSonalized Medical Search. It offers quick conversion of your PubMed search strategy into RSS overviews that can be saved and personalized.

Below you can see the short teaser videos with interviews with the key note speakers of Zorg 2.0. Berci is the second one to appear in this video.

interview teaser from lucien engelen on Vimeo.

Portable Firefox to Demonstrate Library Toolbar

2009-03-25T13:14:00.004+01:00

Image by Travelin' Librarian via Flickr

It is not new and we have been using it often, but not blogged about it. The Central Medical Library of the UMCG is doing presentations and demo's on a regular bases at departments of the hospital to show what services are available. We also show new developments in Healthcare and web 2.0 and try to make applied use of it. At some places we can not show our Library Toolbar, because the default browser in the hospital is Internet Explorer and, as you would suspect, not everybody has admin rights to install software like Firefox. To be abled to show at least how the Library Toolbar works, we use a usb-stick with a portable version of Firefox with the toolbar pre-installed and so far it is really working fine!