Barnett-Briggs Unfiltered

Pesky Publishers

2012-01-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

They're at it again, those pesky publishers, specifically those belonging to the Association of American Publishers (AAP). They're trying to preserve their profits at the expense of the public who has already paid for the government-funded research they're publishing. They're currently behind a legislative effort to overturn the NIH Public Access Policy, the federal requirement that authors of government-funded research deposit their manuscripts in PubMed Central where they will be made public after a 12-month embargo period.

Shouldn't government-funded research be freely accessible by the public in open-access journals, rather than sequestered in expensive subscription-based journals? Of course...a no-brainer. And by the way, I think the 12-month embargo period is way too long. But this is what publishers are supposed to do. They're not in business for their health. They're in business to stay in business, and that means making money. And this is what librarians, academics, researchers and other clear-thinking people are supposed to do: protest and point out the errors in the AAP's collective thinking.

I'm letting my Representative know what I think about this proposed legislation, HR 3699, the Research Works Act. How about you other clear-thinking people?

Yay, LibGuides!

2011-11-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

Take a look at our Consumer Health Guide (click the blue Consumer Health link in the widget below), the library's latest masterpiece. It was created by librarian Liza Ly with the assistance of the LibGuide software. Our relatively inexpensive subscription to LibGuides enables us to create these fantastic-looking sites, all without benefit of html or xhtml knowledge or whatever the heck it takes to build websites,and about which I know nothing.

We think the applications are endless, and not just for libraries. Plus, LibGuides has a mobile site builder which enables you to create a mobile-enhanced site, the sine qua non of web presence these days. Let me know if you want more details about this product.

Google Vs. Librarian

2011-10-06T10:50:00.001-07:00

This is the message that greets you (imprinted on the carpet) when you step in the door at the Gungahlin Public Library in Canberra, Australia. Ironically, I immediately Googled Neil Gaiman to see who he was and what his credentials were for making such a strong statement about the value of librarians.

Turns out he's one of the top ten living post-modern writers, according to the Dictionary of Literary Biography. So he should know what he's talking about, I would say.

That being said, I would also say there's no contest here: no adversarial relationship between Google and librarians. Google is the librarian's best friend, and I frankly can't remember what we librarians did in the days before Google. I do remember, though, that it took us a lot longer to do it than it does now.

Yea for National Academies Press

2011-06-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

The National Academies Press, the organization that publishes reports for the National Academies of Sciences, the Instutute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, announced last week that it is making all of its published reports freely downloadable to all. They used to provide free content in underdeveloped countries, but the policy change now makes their content free to everyone everywhere. This includes their current offerings plus all future reports published by the Press.

According to NAP's Executive Director, Barbara Kline Pope, "Our business model has evolved so that it is now financially viable to put this content out to the entire world for free. This is a wonderful opportunity to make a positive impact by more effectively sharing our knowledge and analyses." The free PDFs are available exclusively from the NAP’s website, http://www.nap.edu/

Happy National Library Week

2011-04-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

That's right, all week this week, you'll find us librarians celebrating in the stacks. And those of us who don't have stacks will be feeling equally festive in front of our computer screens.

A recent blog post by CNN Librarian Kerith McFadden pointed out that librarians are not only heroic (example: Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of Basra, Iraq, who removed 30,000 books from the city's main library before it was destroyed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq), but also powerful. According to a character in Spider Robinson's "The Callahan Touch", one of "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off."

Michael Moore adds this more ominous note, "I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. ... You think they're just sitting at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them"

So we'll carry on here with the celebrating. LOUD and PROUD as my friend and colleague Lauren Maggio, Clinical Librarian at Stanford's Lane Medical Library, suggested on the back of the above postcard she sent me. Thanks, Lauren. If you hadn't sent that card, the entire week might have gone by without celebration.

2010-10-18T14:35:00.001-07:00

Visit Open Access Week

AND don't forget to visit our information table on Thursday, October 21st, 1-2 p.m., Bldg. 3, room 505. If the weather's nice, we may opt for the covered entrance in front of Carr Auditorium. We'll have cookies, stickers, pens, t-shirt giveaways, and, oh yes, information on why you should consider publishing in Open Access journals or, at the very least, depositing your postprints in OA archives such as the UC eScholarship repository

Podcast

2010-09-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

Powered by Podbean.com
I just learned how to create podcasts using a few free online resources: Audacity, Freemusic, and Podbean.

Farmer's Markets at Hospitals

2010-09-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

There's a story in the New York Times this morning about Preston Maring, an Oakland Ob/Gyn physician who's influencing his organization's food environment by establishing farmer's markets in and around Kaiser medical centers. Check out his blog

PubMed...Half Full or Half Empty?

2010-09-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

PubMed, the National Library of Medicine's interface to Medline, recently announced proudly that it just added the 20 MILLIONTH citation to its database. It's considered to be the world's largest and probably most important strictly biomedical database, although there are other databases that are larger in scope that contain more records. What's interesting to me is not the size of the database, but the fact that 3 million of those citations have full text connected with them, a fact that was buried in the second paragraph of the announcement.

This could be seen as a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty situation, although I choose to see it as a half-full glass, or to be more precise, a .15 full glass, probably because I remember the days when there was zero full text connected to PubMed, and even the days when there was no PubMed.

Obviously, the Open Access movement has a long way to go, that is, .85 of the full glass. I don't want to put publishers out of business, but I do think something needs to change in their business models in order to facilitate scientific information discoverability and collaboration. Technology has provided the means for access, and the time is ripe for a scholarly publishing paradigm shift. Next time you're wondering what journal to publish your scientific paper in consider Biomed Central journals. Let's get that glass filled up.

Review of the iPad on Medical Rounds

2010-08-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

For all you proud iPad owners: here's a physician's take on the practicality of using the device on patient rounds. According to him, the availability of wireless connectivity is crucial. What's your experience been on the wards here? Please comment.

Assessing the Human Health Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Institute of Medicine Workshop - Institute of Medicine

2010-08-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

Thought you might be interested in looking at a video summary of the IOM workshop, held June 22-23, 2010. Assessing the Human Health Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Institute of Medicine Workshop - Institute of Medicine

Text-A-Librarian @ SFGH

2010-08-09T09:19:00.001-07:00

Responding to the increasing popularity of texting over phoning, the Barnett-Briggs Medical Library has begun a new Text-A-Librarian service. "Why", you may ask, "would I ever want to text a librarian?" Since you asked, let me digress and tell you a story about the olden days, that is, pre-Google days, when librarians provided what was quaintly called "Reference Service".

We had a collection of books quaintly called "the reference section". These books consisted of now-antiquated publications such as directories, almanacs, yearbooks, gazeteers, encyclopedias, dictionaries, indexes, etc., and we pretty much knew what was in each one of them. So when someone asked a question, which they did frequently, we would go straightaway to the reference section, pull off the most likely book and look in the index to find the answer.

Librarians would deal with homework questions, settle bar arguments, such as the number of home runs hit by "X" in the World Series of 19XX, advise homemakers on the correct formulation of a bouquet garni for the evening's stew, etc., or show authors how to figure out which publishers would most likely be interested in their manuscripts. In the case of medical librarians in those pre-Medline days, we would look up journal articles on specific topics in something called "Index Medicus", which came out monthly and were cumulated into a huge annual volume. Considering the size of the print, it was a wonder we ever found anything.

Back to the present day and the original question: Why, when you have all the resources of the Internet at your veritable fingertips and all the power of Google at your command, would you ever need or want to ask a librarian a question? It's because you have all the resources of the Internet at your veritable fingertips and all the power of Google at your command. You have access to so much information that, as the Big Blue Book says, you realize that your life has become unmanageable, at least as far as the information part goes.

Librarians can narrow down those 2,345,644,677 Google hits and give you only those that are recent, authoritative, and applicable to your question. You want only evidence-based articles? Maybe only systematic reviews? Editorials? Only articles by enzymologists in Zaire if, in fact, there are enzymologists in Zaire? Need a handout on smoking cessation in Serbo-Croatian? Interested in up-to-date information on the link between anti-perspirants and breast cancer, or the lack of a correlation?

Those are all good reasons to text us. We are standing, well sitting actually, by the phone ready to text you back with good answers to your questions, thus saving you hours of precious time and those uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty that can accompany unanswered questions. Text to 66746 and start your text with the keyword sfgh. Do it now!

Libraries Bigger than Cupcakes?

2010-07-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Linda Holmes of NPR's Monkeysee blog thinks that libraries will be the subject of the next big pop-culture wave, right on the heels of the cupcake craze. She thinks this because:

---Libraries give away things for free: unlike Netflix and Kindle who are friendly but want money for their stuff.

---Librarians are nerdy and actively uncool: they know things and are often openly feisty. They may be slightly subversive and don't follow the party line. Pop culture is now embracing such a perspective. Look at the picture of Linda on her blog and you'll see that Linda is a bit on the nerdy side herself, although certainly not actively uncool.

---Libraries are green and local: they reuse books, are anti-chain store, and are down home and folksy, which is all good per Linda.

---Libraries serve the public: Yes, the SFGH Barnett-Briggs Library is OPEN TO THE PUBLIC and open to all that that entails, including unpredictability. Sometimes the unpredictability creates drama resulting in calls for assistance from the Institutional Police. Thank you, Institutional Police.

For the above reasons, librarians here at the BBML are preparing now and will be ready for the coming wave of popularity.

Research Raven Rocks

2010-05-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

I noticed a snippet of news in a library newsletter the other day about a web site called "ResearchRaven" . What got my attention was not the idea or anything related to the content, but the location: Corvallis Oregon. That snagged me because I lived in Corvallis for ten years in the 1980's, and worked as the one-and-only medical librarian at Good Samaritan Hospital for six of the ten.

So I spent some time looking at ResearchRaven and was increasingly blown away by its utility, functionality, aesthetics, and overall coolness. Developed by librarian Hope Leman (I knew her father, Craig Leman, a surgeon) at Samaritan Health Services Center for Health Research and Quality, it's a free service that aims to provide researchers with up-to-the-minute publishing, meeting, and funding opportunities. Using RSS technology (Feedburner to be exact), it aggregates a variety of information sources in the medical and physical sciences into one well-designed user interface. Users can specifiy their area(s) of interest and be informed via RSS when new opportunities are announced.

As librarians know, this is the type of information that's difficult to ferret out, and if it's not current, it's not worth much, so having it combined in one place is real treasure. Not to mention the fact that it's free...or did I just mention that?

Thank you Hope. Well done!

Smartphones in Health Care

2010-04-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

According to a study published this month by the California HealthCare Foundation, two-thirds of physicians and 42% of consumers used smartphones in 2009. The report, written by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, titled "How Smartphones Are Changing Health Care for Consumers and Providers" focuses on how smartphones are being used in health care.

According to the report, a whopping 50% of iPhone apps for clinicians, medical students, and consumers are categorized as "Medical Reference" apps, and although the largest percentage of those are student study guides (19%), medical literature and drug reference apps together comprise the second largest percentage (13%).

Which brings me to the point of this post: Did you know that the SFGH library has a license to DynaMed, one of the highest-quality point-of-care medical/drug apps available today for physicians? It's relatively comprehensive (3,000 topics), has clearly designated levels of evidence, active links to cited articles, and great navigation for small-screen devices. Best of all, it's free to clinicians at SFGH. Take a look at the full version on the library's web site, and see if you'd like to install it on your phone or PDA. If so, email me (jgraham@sfghdean.ucsf.edu) and let me know what type of mobile device you have. I'll email you back a serial number and instructions for your specific device.

Print Textbooks: Going the Way of the Dodo?

2010-03-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

I was working on my semi-annual print medical book order the other day and realized there was a question running in the background of my mind. It was asking "ummm, exactly why is it that you are ordering these astronomically-expensive paper/print books that very few people are ever going to read anyway?"

So I had to stop and remind myself of some of the reasons for having print books, as opposed to electronic books, in today's medical library. Here are a few I came up with, in order of importance:

Some people want to read print books rather than electronic books. They find the paper, the smell, the browseability, something about the esthetics of print books appealing. Although I don't feel that way about textbooks or books I'm using for reference, I do feel that way about leisure reading books, and that gives me justification for purchasing medically-related non-fiction print books such as Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto, Paul Linde's Danger to Self, and Rebecca Skloot's Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks . These are books I want to read from cover-to-cover, maybe even curl up and get comfortable with.

The second reason is regulatory in nature. The Joint Commission requires that hospital libraries provide access to current reference books in all medical specialty areas during times that computer networks and electrical systems are down. So this means you've gotta have... guess what? Yup, good old-fashioned astronomically-expensive print medical reference books AND a flashlight.

After explaining that to myself, I carried on with my book order.

Postcard from edge...

2010-01-21T16:06:00.000-08:00

From the edge of Lake Mudd, that is. The landscape outside the library's workroom windows in Building 30 changes dramatically every day, and although we're growing weary of weeks of rain, the bad weather has brought us a new water feature to look at...Lake Mudd. Perhaps later in the year, we'll rename it Lake Dust. Then, if all goes according to plan, it will become even deeper and lined with cement, rebar, pilings, tie-backs etc., the foundation of the new hospital. This is exciting business. We never know exactly what landscapes will confront us when we come to work in the morning.

Baaaaad Thoughts

2009-12-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

While Twittering this morning I came across a report that brings scientific evidence to the proposition that bad thoughts cause bad outcomes. DO NOT have these thoughts, or have as few of these thoughts as you possibly can.

Reading Books on Teeny Screens: Good Idea or Health Hazard?

2009-11-24T15:09:00.000-08:00

I attended a Medical Library Association-sponsored webcast last week, "Cutting the Cord: connecting to our Mobile Users". It was about providing electronic content to users via their mobile devices such as iPhones, PDAs and other handhelds. One thing I was surprised to learn was that people are actually reading books on devices with little bitty screens such as iPhones and iPod Touchs. I can understand Kindles and Netbooks, but iPhones?

Just to prove how ridiculous the idea was I went to the iPhone app store and installed both Amazon's Kindle and Lexcycle's Stanza (both free apps) and downloaded a book (free, of course) from each to see how I liked it. Surprise...I liked it! I don't particularly like reading on my desktop monitor, but this is different, and I'm not sure why. Now I can read books on my iPhone while I'm on Muni trying to ignore the shootings and muggings. Just have to remember not to read while driving. Someone might video me and put it on YouTube.

Health Journalism and the Patient Safety Movement

2009-10-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

UCSF's own Robert Wachter has published another well-written, thought-provoking commentary, this time on the contribution that the media makes in the patient safety effort. Titled "The media: an essential, if sometimes artibrary, promoter of patient safety", it appears in AHRQ's Morbidity & Mortality Rounds on the Web and includes an interview with Charles Ornstein, Pulitzer prize-winning health care journalist.

Especially interesting to me was Ornstein's explanation of how health care reporters get their leads and how good journalists provide balance and perspective (how bad is this compared to other hospitals?) as well as just getting the facts straight on what are often very complex topics.

Front Lines

2009-10-22T16:09:00.001-07:00

I visited one of our primary care clinics today with the goal of showing the physicians and nurse practitioners how to register for our Loansome Doc service, a full text document delivery service that's built into PubMed. As long as I don't get too long-winded (a temptation) I'm well received during these visits because what is being offered is a quick, easy-to-use service at no charge to the individuals or their clinics. Gotta like it.

Here's a secret: although I make clinic visits under the guise of registering clinicians for Loansome Doc, I always manage to propagandize a bit for some of our other library services, including my absolute all-time favorite resource: Da-da...DynaMed. Click the DynaMed link on our home page to take a look.

DynaMed is a point-of-care tool that is in a good position, I think, to knock off the current king of the hill, UpToDate. Unlike UTD, DynaMed has clearly explained graded levels of evidence, great navigation, clickable reference links to full text articles AND a very usable version for PDAs, including smart phones. Not to mention the fact that it costs approximately 1/10th of what an UTD site license costs. If you are a SFGH clinician and would like to get access to DynaMed, please contact me, jgraham@sfghdean.ucsf.edu. I'll send you the information you need to get started.

Oh yes, this post was supposed to be about Loansome Doc. You can contact me at that same email address if you want to register for Loansome Doc.

Blame vs. Accountability

2009-10-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

This week's New England Journal of Medicine contains an article by UCSF's Robert Wachter about the delicate balance between the "no blame" approach and the sometimes overlooked need for physician accountability in regards to patient safety issues. The authors suggest that because physicians are not hospital employees they are subject to only weak enforcement of safety standards. Not wanting to alienate physicians and lose the business they bring in, hospitals have been reluctant to play the enforcer.

Citing the "no-blame" approach as the wrong tool for mature patient-safety practices, Wachter and co-author J. Pronovost (Johns Hopkins) get down to brass tacks by suggesting the circumstances under which physicians should be chastised for lack of adherence to patient safety practices and giving specific punishments such as loss of privileges and education for specific transgressions.

I imagine this article will generate a few letters to the editor, but because it bridges the gap between theory and practice, it's a valuable contribution to patient safety literature and a good starting point for further discussion.

Looking for computer software textbooks?

2009-09-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

I was looking for how-to manuals for Microsoft Access recently when I discovered that UCSF has licensed a database called Safari Books Online
" over 8,000 vetted learning and reference resources from leading publishers like O'Reilly Media, Addison-Wesley, Peachpit Press, Apress, Manning and Talented Pixie"

The collection focuses on computer technology and also includes graphic design, and business management titles. You can browse by category or search for books on everything from Adobe Photoshop to Unix. From the Safari website: http://search.safaribooksonline.com/home, you can read and even download chapters from any computer on the UCSF network or thorough your VPN@UCSF remote access account.

You can also find links to these online books by searching the UCSF Library catalog by keyword. Example: search keyword 'photoshop' - look for [electronic resource] in your search results. You can also search by title and use the option on the results page to limit your search to "Online Books"

Now, I really have no excuse not to learn how to use Photoshop.

Senator Ted Kennedy and good endings

2009-08-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

I just read this article in the NYT and it got me thinking :

After Diagnosis, Determined to Make a ‘Good Ending’

By MARK LEIBOVICH

Published: August 27, 2009

From the time his brain cancer was diagnosed 15 months ago, Senator Kennedy spoke of having a “good ending for myself.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/us/politics/27year.html

The Kennedy family's contributions to policies and impact on the lives of all Americans are profound and will shape the stories we tell about what it is to be a "good" American for years to come. With the death of both Eunice and Ted this month,I 'm glad to see so much media attention being paid to their positive examples of public service as a reminder that 'government' is not a four letter word.

What struck me about this article were the specific details about what a good death meant to Senator Kennedy, sailing, dinner parties when he felt up to it, eating mocha chip ice cream and watching James Bond movies with his wife. Yes, he was the 'Lion of the Senate' but he was also a simple human who found comfort in the same things we all do. Even without the money, influence and prestige he enjoyed, most of us have someone who will bring us ice cream and watch a movie with us. No one is exempt from suffering but luckily most of us can find enjoyment in small things.

I also like that the article pointed out that having brain cancer gave Ted Kennedy time to be with his family and say goodbye, time to work on his memoir and receive appreciation from his colleagues and friends. Of course it's in comparison to the untimely assassinations of his his two brothers; still this is the first time I've seen death by brain cancer mentioned with a positive slant in the mainstream media, as something other than a dread and terrifying monster of a disease.

I'm glad Senator Kennedy got his "storybook ending" even as I know that the living of it for him was something different, more messily human than the story, but no less grand.