JAAPA Ask-a-Librarian Revisited: Of Google Scholar and Access to Literature

Back in June I had posted about a collaborative column in JAAPA. (seeLibrarian Clinician Collaborations). The column written by Jim Anderson and Susan Klawansky addresses questions posed by Physician Assistants. The November 2009 column highlighted 2 items of current relevant interest to me.

The first question is , “Do you recommend Google Scholar? When I use it, I am not sure what databases it is pulling information from or whether it omits certain databases. Is there any advantage to this resource over Medline?“

The answer focuses on the benefits of Medline and in my opinion provides an excellent and balanced answer. The highlights of the answer begin saying, “Medline, for many purposes, will probably be the best database to search for answers to clinical questions.” This is followed by brief reasons why this is the case. The answer to this question ends with a description of a good role for Google Scholar saying, “Google Scholar searches some portion of full text, which Medline does not, and Google Scholar searches content beyond journal literature. So, Google Scholar, for all its limitations, can be a valuable adjunct when trying to locate articles on obscure or extremely specific topics” The entire content of this answer is a quick but worthwhile read.

Since our Health Sciences Library has recently been discussing adding Google Scholar to our Quick Links on the newly updated library’s website, I found this answer both topic and edifying.

The second question in the month’s column is, “I see patients in a private practice setting without academic access. Can you advise me on how PAs and other providers in my situation can access medical literature?“

This question gets to the heart of my world. I can’t tell you how often I deal with this question. Here in NC we are fortunate to have an option of for individual clinicians to subscribe to a package of resources which have been selected to be of interest (we hope) to practicing clinicians. This answer highlights some options in Washington State such as HEAL-WA. Loansome Doc option is also explored.

An aspect of this question which we are now focusing on in NC — very recently — is the notion of whether clinicians working in private practice need different resources than those working in hospitals. We are also examining the role and access to point of care resources in private practice and the integration of these resources into Health Records. This questions become even more timely in the world of ARRA monies and the potential for monetary implications for places that don’t bring electronic medical records online.

We have recently been having an online discussion about the merits of adding Google Scholar to our Quick Links resources list on the Health Sciences Library web page.

I love the way reading articles sparks ideas in my mind that send it off in directions that the author might not have even imagined.

Again — I’m so impressed with this project and wish other professional journals would incorporate similar columns. Good job!!

2CUL Project & File Sharing Piracy… Tidbits from the Wired Campus

A couple of items from the Wired Campus in the Chronicle of Higher Education caught my eye this week (and its only Tuesday)…

“Columbia and Cornell Libraries Announce ‘Radical’ Partnership” (Howard, J. Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/28/2009)

This radical partnership relates to plans by the libraries of these two institutions to, “jointly transform their operations.” The project called 2CUL (pronounced too cool) will focus on 3 areas: “managing electronic resources and other nuts-and-bolts library work, building global-collecting capabilities, and creating a digital-preservation infrastructure.” They are planning on creating a shared library information management system to accomplish their goals.

What I find interesting isn’t that there is a collaboration like this happening, but that it has taken this long for this type of collaboration to emerge. I also find it interesting that this type of collaboration is being characterized as “radical”. To me it seems more logical. Then again this is the type of thing our AHEC libraries have been working on for the past several years. We have been moving to managing electronic resources centrally. This model just seems to make sense especially for smaller (compared to academics at any rate) hospital libraries. It will be interesting to see how the details of working with licensing and access and all the other publisher based specifics will play out. There is, of course, the difference between management and ownership. Even if publishers won’t work out joint purchases it could still be possible to centrally manage the collections.

“The Latest File-Sharing Piracy: Academic Journals” (Terris, B. Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/30/2009).

A recent study published in the Journal of Medical Informatics examines a file sharing site used by medical students and professionals to obtain non-open access journals for free. According to the Chronicle there was an 83% success rate in finding articles. The ethical implications of this aren’t covered in the article but the article does hint at the ethical questions saying, ““In the field of medicine, ethics plays a pivotal role, and yet the site displays activities by medical students, teachers, and practicing professionals that are ethically dubious.”

I wish I could say I’m surprised by this, but given what I know about medical residents sharing subscriptions to some licensed resources, I’ve had inklings of these types of behaviors for quite a while. What will be interesting to watch is to see how publishers uncover the original source of the articles from personal subscriptions or from institutional subscriptions. Since most medical students have a good network of access to articles, I’m wondering why they would feel the need to resort to free sharing. Is it the time (they can’t wait for access from an article not owned by their institution) or is it the money (they can’t afford the what 8$ ILL fee??). As we seem to be noting of late there have been some ethical oddities in the relationship between medicine and publishing, so again this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. I guess the next logical question should be, what role can librarians play in shaping responsible behavior in our consitutents in regards to resource access?

Usability Testing

I’ve been out of the office for 3 days conducting usability testing for our new/updated site. We went to 3 locations and worked with 9 users/testers. I’m not attempting to write our findings here … that would be a bit premature (to say the least).

Although I had been checking email while I was out of the office and although I was working on our site, our project with our typical user groups; its amazing how out of touch I feel with the library world. This is odd since I was spending all my time testing in libraries. I was reading tonight trying to find something to write about and it felt like it had been weeks since I had thought about macro issues.

Since I’m feeling a bit out of touch with the types of macro issues about which I usually post and since my mind is still caught up in all things usability, I think I’ll do a brief de-brief (ha ha) (or not…)

We tested a range of users running the spectrum of occupations and familiarity with our existing site. We were sort of following one Jacob Nielsen’s rule of thumbs about the number of users. He has stated that, “It takes only five users to uncover 80 percent of high-level usability problems” — Our testing uncovered overwhelming consistency across the spectrum of our users. Which was good news for us moving forward.

Here are my interesting observations about the testing… From my highly unscientific observations on this topic, the biggest variable that seemed to result in differing comments or concerns with our testing was one occupational factor: being a librarian. The librarians we showed the site to, seemed to have issues, concerns, or ideas that fell out of the spectrum of things that were being experienced by the other users we tested. This wasn’t hugely surprising, but it was interesting.

This next observation about which much has been written is that there did also seem to be some usage issues based on age. Since so much has been written in other places about this; I’ll just leave it to say that we (or rather I) did note it to a small extent.

I found a usability testing “tutorial” hosted at the University of Texas at Austin. (accessed 11/2/2009), this was the basic outline of how we conducted our tests. (although I found this tutorial after we had already planned and completed most of our testing).

Tomorrow… back to the salt mine. Maybe I’ll be feeling a bit more inspired tomorrow night…

Document Rental Service, the DeepDyve Service, Implications??

Thanks to Debbie S. for bringing this to my attention. I’m always scanning for inspiration. Sam Diaz posted on ZDNet, “Document rental service brings ‘deep web’ content to the mainstream.” (ZDNet, posted 10/27/2009). He describes DeepDyve as a

a search engine that specializes in indexing the contents of documents published deep into a Web site, is announcing a Netflix-like service that allows users to “rent” documents such as medical journal articles on a per-use basis.

Their target audience is characterized as, “knowledge workers.” These may be people who don’t have access to the subscription packages available to large institutions. The rental fees are .99 per view or a monthly fee structure.

I haven’t quite wrapped my brain around the idea of whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for libraries. I do know that there is a user population out there willing to pay almost anything for access to the research content that they need. I don’t know enough about what the limitations on views means. I’m assuming this means that you can only read it online. If someone were allowed to print or email these articles the .99 per article would be an amazing deal (given the fact the pay per view offered by many publishers runs upwards to $25 per article). I would really need to understand what the .99 per view really means. Is it possible to cut & paste from within the document? That might then make the deal more attractive for some. I’m not sure about the usefulness in the long run of only being able to read articles online.

DeepDyve has indexed approximately 30 million articles and this does indeed sound like a very high number. Overall, however, many of the larger publishers of medical journals (Elsevier, LWW for example) aren’t indexed … yet. There were a couple of interesting inclusions in their list of indexed journals. Health Affairs which has recently been lost to Ebsco for full text access is apparently indexed (or included in their indexing). The indexing of this title seems to be sadly lacking any ability to pull up any articles that I tried to find. The one it did find seemed only to pull the abstract indexed in Medline (happily for free). There seem to be many issues before this particular service becomes mainstream. It is, however, only a beta site at the moment.

Rather than being overly concerned about the relative merits of this particular service, I’m more interested about whether literature (or research) rental is a mere fad or a trend that will become an established service. I have a recollection that there might have been a posting about this on the liblicense listserv so I’ll be checking those archives. Since I haven’t had time to process or research this, stay tuned for potential future posts on this topic.

…”Are Libraries for the History Books?”

An article in today’s USA Today (October 26, 2009), “School chooses Kindle; are libraries for the history ‘books’?” (USA Today, Greg Toppo, 10/16/2009) details the experience of the Cushing Academy a New England boarding school and its decision to get rid of the books in its library. It plans to replace its books with a fully digital collection. There is much to be debated about this, and most of it was well covered in the article.

There are 2 issues, however, that struck me. The first issue is the backlash that the academy’s director is facing. He has apparently been called a book burner and even compared to Adolph Hitler (beyond a bit extreme). The director’s reply is that he has done this to, “save libraries five, 10, 15 years down the road.” He goes on further to say that they have, “hired more librarians to help students navigate the electronic stacks and tell “what is valuable information or reliable from what is junk.”

In times when many schools (and even communities) are closing their libraries I find it beyond odd that a school that is thinking creatively about how to keep its library open and thriving is condemned as being a bastion of book burning. How very backwards!! When did we begin to equate libraries only with they physical manifestation of a house of books?

So here’s my punchline question, how in the world did USA Today get it so wrong? The title of their article totally misrepresented what was actually happening at that school. If someone only read the title and skimmed the first part of the article, they might believe that this school had closed its library. Let me reiterate what to me is the salient point (at least from an enlightened self-interest perspective) this school library is still very much open and even still have real life genuine librarians working there.

As I stated earlier, there might be much to debate about the relative merits of a school choosing to get rid of its entire print collection. There are legitimate questions that should be raised about placing all of the library’s content in the hands of a small number of electronic publishers. I would hope, however, that those questions would stay focused on those issues and not veer into the lie that this school by getting rid of its books did close its library. Perhaps, just perhaps this school actually saved its library.

As we (librarians) all move into the future we really need to come to terms with what we as librarians really do. It is becoming more important than ever to break the myth of librarians as the gatekeepers to print books.

ps — don’t get me wrong, personally there is nothing I love more than reading a real book…

Come explore the Human-Animal Health Knowledge Connection with ANCHASL at the NC Zoo

Our Fall ANCHASL meeting is being held on November 13, 2009 at the NC Zoo. This meeting features the MLA CE Course: The Human-Animal Health Knowledge Connection. This course, “will create awareness of the roles of veterinary personnel and the numerous connections between human and animal health. It covers zoonotic diseases, highlights information sharing between veterinary personnel, human clinicians, and public health…”

The ANCHASL board did have some concerns that in these trying economic times that some libraries (or home institutions) wouldn’t be willing to fund or allow time off to attend this meeting because the relevancy of the course wasn’t obvious. We have heard from at least 2 members that this indeed is the case.

Personally I think that may be short sighted, and I’m going to provide several headlines or news stories that express why…

“State affirms Lyme disease danger” (News & Observer, 10/1/2009, Sarah Avery). This story about Lyme disease in North Carolina, quotes the NC State Public Health Veterinarian.

AVMA advises hunters on how to protect themselves from zoonoses(javma News, 10/15/2009)This article describes a guidebook created for hunters because, “Hunters are at risk of exposure to several infectious diseases, ranging from avian influenza and Lyme disease to rabies and tuberculosis. Sources of exposure to these and other zoonotic pathogens are not limited to infected animals but include ticks and other insects as well as contaminated soil and water.”

No more pecks on the lips from your pet parrot! (Destination Sante Health News Agency, 10/21/2009)
…”This little gesture of affection enjoyed by many bird owners could well lead to the transmission of a disease known as psittacosis. And you should also bear this in mind when cleaning out your bird’s cage and equip yourself with gloves and a mask…Psittacosis is a zoonotic disease, transmitted to humans when they inhale contaminated dust or droppings that have been aerosolized…”

Notice that I didn’t even mention H1N1 influenza… or malaria ….

Public Libraries and their Communities – The Collection Conundrum

Two “news” items caught my eye this evening (as I was seeking inspiration for this evenings posting). There was an editorial in our local paper today (The News & Observer, October 20, 2009), “No smart selection” (Sarah McCoy) bemoaning the collections of one of our local library systems. She states that she is, “constantly underwhelmed by the offerings at the .. Public Libraries.” She characterizes the current content as, “fluff and fiction”. She closes by saying, “the nonfiction that suits the needs of … the citizenry is certainly outside of the gardening, bridal, and crafts sections that are the most well-stocked.”

Before I begin my commentary, let me state from the outset that I’m not a public librarian. Nor am I even a librarian who works with print anything. None the less I am a frequent library user and as the saying goes, some of my best friends are public librarians. Here’s the bind that I imagine many public library directors (or collection development librarians) find themselves in. They have limited funds and they need to stock what the most people want. They often don’t have the luxury of collecting for the end of the long tail. Furthermore, libraries have processes in place such as Interlibrary Loans to help facilitate the needs of those falling at the end of the tail. I would also have to imagine that for the public librarians in our area that has 2 major publicly funded universities and 1 large private university know that there are indeed other options for users with more “high brow” needs (and yes I do realize that high brow is a bit pejorative in tone).

The other concern I have with this form of communication is that her letter provides no guidance about what she would find desirable. (for the benefit of the doubt … her letter to the editor might have been abbreviated). If she is hoping to rally others to her cause, she would have been better served to focus more on the specifics of her concerns and less on the ivory tower (doh I did it again another pejorative statement) characterizations of the library collections as being “fluff”. Personally I think our library system has a good collection for our community, and I guess I’m feeling a bit insulted by the tone of her letter.

The second news article posted on the MyRecordJournal.com website (of Chesire NH) (Jesse Buchanan, 10/19/2009), “Cheshire librarian challenged over book“, deals with a decision by the library director to purchase a book dealing with the Petit killings (a local murder of a family). The book in question was written, “mainly from the perspective of the suspected killers.” Many members of the community felt that the decision to purchase this book was insensitive at best. The library director defended her decision saying that, “she received requests for the book and there is a waiting list of 11 people to check out the books when they arrive.”

This situation seems a lot more complicated that an editorial from a citizen complaining about a sparse collection. Since it isn’t my local community, I won’t try to comment on this. I just raise it here to illustrate the complex issues faced by public librarians as they go about their jobs building collections that meet the needs of their communities.

Does the Brain Like E-Books

A recent posting in the New York Time Room for Debate Blog, “Does the Brain Like E-Books?” (New York Times, October 14, 2009 Opinion Section). included discussions by several academicians about learning, reading, and e-books. These postings were to address the following questions:

Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?

The resounding answer seems to be…. its too soon to say. Actually it wasn’t necessarily resounding, but that seems to me to be the obvious conclusion from each of their essays.

What I found interesting was there were actually some discrepancies in “facts” presented in some of the postings. Sandra Aamodt writes, “Electronic reading has become progressively easier as computer screens have improved and readers have grown accustomed to using them. Still, people read more slowly on screen, by as much as 20-30 percent.” While Gloria Mark writes, “When PC’s first entered the home in the 1980s, a number of studies comparing the effects of reading on an electronic display versus paper showed that reading was slower on a screen. However, displays have vastly improved since then, and now with high resolution monitors reading speed is no different than reading from paper.” The difference is small, one says the speed is still slower but improving yet the other says the difference is non-existent. A very minor discrepancy, yet it does make one wonder where are they getting their facts? It is an interesting side bar — the prevalence of experts stating information as fact, without citing a source. Since their conclusions didn’t differ greatly and since these factual differences were minor in this instance, the difference doesn’t matter much. It does, however, raise the need for diligence in evaluating what we read.

Ok, enough of that digression. In a similar vein, Gloria Mark ended her posting saying, “More and more, studies are showing how adept young people are at multitasking.” Yet in an earlier posting on my blog, I referred to a recent study that shows multi-taskers are not so adept at doing — well — anything. (please excuse the hyperbole). It just highlights again — the points I had raised in the above paragraph about needing to evaluate the things we read. She ends by saying, “the extent to which they can deeply engage with the online material is a question for further research.” I think that best summarizes almost all of the postings.

I was happy to see the conclusions being so open to uncertainty. When I first saw the headline (which was forwarded to me in several emails); I was a bit concerned that it would be yet another posting about how all things digital and electronic are outpacing all things print. I was happy to see the measured balanced tone of all the postings. I don’t know how quickly human brains will evolve to engage new learning styles, but I do know its too soon to draw any definitive conclusions and I was glad for that validation.

I also know that I probably can’t safely say, Long Live the Book, but for today I can say that the book lives to see another day.

Information Literacy Awareness (pt. 2)

I have decided to “celebrate” information literacy awareness month, but dedicating at least a second blog posting to this “event”. President Obama signed a National Information Literacy Awareness month proclamation on October 1, 2009. Some highlights of this proclamation include:

• “Rather than merely possessing data, we must also learn the skills necessary to acquire, collate, and evaluate information for any situation. This new type of literacy also requires competency with communication technologies, including computers and mobile devices that can help in our day-to-day decisionmaking”
• “Though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it”
• “we have seen a crisis of authenticity emerge. We now live in a world where anyone can publish an opinion or perspective, whether true or not, and have that opinion amplified within the information marketplace”
• “Americans have unprecedented access to the diverse and independent sources of information, as well as institutions such as libraries and universities, that can help separate truth from fiction and signal from noise”
• “The ability to seek, find, and decipher information can be applied to countless life decisions, whether financial, medical, educational, or technical”

Although I’m quite excited about this Presidential Declaration, I’m more puzzled about the silence about it coming from official library channels. ALA’s web site makes no mention of this, Library Journal and all its assorted and sundry blogs etc make no mention of this. There must be something political afoot that I’m missing because this seems like some bandwagon we’d be wanting to jump upon. So I’m jumping … Hooray for Information Literacy. Rah Rah Rah!! (and no that really isn’t sarcastic)

October is Information Literacy Month

I’m sure you’re all busy making plans for celebrating National Information Literacy Month. And if we aren’t, we should be. I have long been “arguing” that the future of librarians lies in our ability to teach users to evaluate information. To me, this is the heart of the future for librarians. I have come across several articles and/or discussions lately about the role of librarians in evaluation and literacy. One of the most compelling and I think, “must read” articles on this topic is in the Lafayette/West Lafayette Journal & Courier, “Information literacy more than just Googling,” (Frances Bridges – 10/12/2009). This article is an interview with Sharon Weiner the W. Wayne Booker Endowed Chair in information literacy for Purdue Libraries and the vice-chair of the National Forum on Information Literacy. After reading this interview, I was filled with genuine optimism about the future of librarianship (for the first time in a long while). Highlights of this article include a definition of information literacy as, “the ability to find information when you need it, the best information, and when to use it when you need it.”

The impetus behind Purdue’s creation of the information literacy position and information literacy program’s stemmed from business & industry. Purdue was hearing from different sector’s about information literacy gaps that were impacting the ability of new students to be successful in the workplace. Some of these gaps include

In business, we’re hearing that students need help with retraining, because they’re not adapting to changes in their jobs.

In education, students don’t have the ability to critically analyze things and situations; they are not discriminate about the information they’re accumulating.

In health, they are expected to participate in their own health care, especially with conditions such as diabetes where there is a high degree of self-care. They need information about what diet and activity choices they should be making.

In government, we’re finding that many are not informed citizens. Not only do they need to be voting, but they need to be informed. They need to get information that is unbiased and understand what they’re voting for.

Although I was aware of a lot of the information in this article, the concept of information literacy as helping to adapt to change was a new one to me. In a world where we are at a constant whirlwind of change, this hook of change adaptation and information literacy is an exciting niche for librarians.

Librarians are often asked to discuss Google and how it impacts our work. When asked what librarians can do that Google can’t, Dr. Weiner replied, “They know about more sophisticated strategies to find information and more efficient ways to find information than Google and teach you. They can teach you to evaluate those sources you find on Google and get better, more accurate results.” Of course, the interesting challenge for us is convincing students that they need better and more accurate results.

In honor of National Information Literacy Month, I highly recommend this article.