On having a health information need

During the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday, my partner and I were awakened by my beloved elderly border collie having a seizure on the living room floor. Having never seen a seizure before, I was aghast to see Zeke foaming at the mouth, eyes glazed, feet paddling away rapidly as if he were running full tilt. The seizure was prolonged, lasting at least five minutes after we woke up, plus, we don't know how long Zeke had been seizing before we woke up. Once the seizure itself subsided, Zeke was compelled to keep moving, unable to stop trotting around for the better part of two hours. A couple of calls to the emergency vet revealed that this is normal behavior for dogs post-seizures, but we still felt horrible and helpless, unable to do anything to assist Zeke other than try to reassure him. Eventually and gradually, Zeke was freed from compulsion to move and the three of us were able to get a few hours rest. He seemed to suffer no permanent effects from the seizure and the aftermath, only exhaustion.

When we visited our regular vet on Tuesday, we found out that seizures over two minutes in duration are considered to be severe in dogs and can cause significant brain damage. The blood work indicated no toxins in his system and nothing unusual except some markers that Zeke had indeed had a seizure. Because of the severity and duration of the seizure, the doctor immediately prescribed phenobarbital as a preventive measure against recurrences. She warned us of side effects, such as excessive thirst and especially balance, gait and disorientation problems, but said these would lessen after a week or two. True to the vet's prediction, our Zeke has indeed been extremely wobbly since Tuesday and somewhat disoriented. Our valiant, hyper, Frisbee dog was reduced to stumbling and falling, struggling to stand upright on the linoleum kitchen floor.

In the wake of this health crisis in our household, did I use my spiffy librarian skillz to seek additional information to address my concerns about the side effects of the medication? Did I search PubMed, Google Scholar or any reference materials to learn more about phenobarbital or seizures in dogs? Did I consult Healthypet.com from the AAHA for more information or consult my colleagues at the Veterinary Medical Library for assistance? Did call the vet? No. I talked to friends and co-workers, talked to my partner, and posted on twitter and Facebook. I talked to the dog, who waggled and licked my nose. In other words, I fretted and sought social support, but took no steps to acquire additional information to help me understand what was happening.

This morning, I woke up, drank a cup of coffee and said to myself, "Self, I think the Merck Veterinary Manual is available online." I consulted the Merck, searched PubMed, looked at the AAHA site and did a Google Scholar search. All of the sources reiterated exactly what the vet originally said about the side effects of phenobarbital subsiding after two weeks. Even so, I feel much better with additional information at hand.

I spend every day helping other people find information. I know that finding consumer health information can be helpful in coming to terms with a new diagnosis, yet, when a crisis presented itself in my life, I froze like a stunned bunny. What if, instead of a dog, the seizure had happened to my partner or elderly parent? What if I didn't understand English very well? What if I had no computer or searching skills? As librarians, we are trained to treat every information need with respect and all due seriousness, but, frankly, there are days when this is easier said than done. The reality is, however, that when people are scared and distressed, they just aren't always very rational. So, the next time Definitions Guy calls five times for the same definitions he requested last week or someone asks if they will get burned if their flame-retardant mattress catches on fire or a freaked out student approaches the desk for help on the verge of tears, I hope I will remember this week with Zeke and treat their questions and concerns with consideration, patience and attention.

Web 2.0 101: Week 1 RSS Feeds & Blogs

During week one of MLA's Web 2.0 101 CE course, we have been asked to reflect on how we envision using RSS feeds at our library and how we think our patrons could use RSS feeds.

At my library, we have set up an RSS feed for our library news posts. This is a good idea, but I don't think we have many subscribers. A couple of our liaison librarians write blogs to update their academic departments; again, they don't have many subscribers and the librarians end up sending notifications of posts via email. Apparently, we would need to do much more marketing to get folks to subscribe to the feeds. We have also discussed setting up a patron centered blog. An excellent example of such a blog from an academic library is Library Hacks from Duke University Libraries. Typical topics range from search tips to library hours to citing sources, all very practical and succinct. My concern about starting such a blog is writing sufficient content to post frequently and substantially. Time is a scarce resource at my library, as it is at many academic libraries, and I wonder how I or other library staff would carve out enough time to make the blog successful.

One of my projects for this summer is to develop a series of Web 2.0 workshops for our patrons, which is one of the reasons I am taking this CE. We envision that the series would include an introductory class about "What is Web 2.0 Anyway?", one on creating Wikis, online tools for collaboration, organizing and sharing information using social bookmarking, and, of course, staying current using RSS feeds. I hope that teaching these workshops is one way we can educate our users about tools like RSS readers so that they will take advantage of the RSS feeds we offer.

I'm also interested in teaching our users how to subscribe to RSS feeds to the tables of contents of journals. We haven't done much to support this, but I know that many libraries have pages on their site which indicate which journals have TOC feeds available, so that would be something we could consider doing. I've figured out how to successfully save and subscribe to feeds from saved searches in PubMed (see my previous post), but am extremely frustrated with the new RSS feeds option for saved searches in Ovid MEDLINE. There doesn't seem to be any way to embed the Libraries' link resolver in the feed. The notifications regarding new articles in my Bloglines doesn't even link to the complete reference in Ovid. So, receiving notifications via Bloglines is frankly darned frustrating, because I then have to go look up the citation in Ovid MEDLINE or PubMed. This is so inefficient that I don't see any reason to burden my patrons with it. The Krafty Librarian and Ratcatcher have written intelligent posts about this OvidSP goofiness.

I look forward to reading other folks posts about how they are using RSS feeds or envision using them at their libraries.

Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools

I've embarked on a new little adventure by enrolling in an eight week online continuing education (CE) course offered by the Medical Library Association called Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools. So, I'll be documenting my progress here on my existing blog.

The tasks for week 1 are all things I've been doing for a while. I've had the blog for about a year, but have never figured out exactly what I want to do with it; recently, I've pretty much ignored it. Perhaps this course will be an opportunity for me to revitalize it. Also, I already have numerous (147!) feeds in my Bloglines account, including feeds from journals and all kinds of blogs from Libraryland.

By the way, there has been some discussion amongst course participants about subscribing to PubMed feeds. If I am already in PubMed via my proxy server, I get the open url links to full text content via my library when I click on the link in my Bloglines. The order is important; I have to go into PubMed via my library's Web site first and authenticate via the proxy server in order to get the links. Also, as I already commented to the listserv (sorry about that, by the way), the PubMed support folks told me that there is a known bug that causes problems with RSS feeds from searches constructed from combining set numbers in the History tab. If you log into your MyNCBI account before you try to save the RSS feed, it seems to work fine.

I'm looking forward to learning some new skills as the course progresses. Stay tuned!

Library Journal Movers and Shakers 2008

The March 15 issue of Library Journal includes the list of Movers and Shakers for 2008! Trying to browse the list of recipients on the LJ site, however, will cause you to beat your head to a bloody pulp on the nearest wall, so take my advice and don't even try. Jessamyn has created a nice brief list of recipients with hyperlinks to the articles about each and Connie Crosby has compiled a list with annotations on her blog. Librarian By Day took Jessamyn's list and added links to the recipients' blogs. Librarians are ace problem solvers, don't you think?

Here are a few highlights from the list, based on my initial reading:

Jessica Moyer and Jennifer Nelson are two librarians in the Twin Cities. Moyer is doing research on readers' advisory and has published Research-Based Readers' Advisory. She is also is adjunct faculty at my own College of St. Catherine. Nelson has created the MicroEntrepreneur Resource Center (MERC), a partnership between the Minneapolis Public Library (now part of the Hennepin County system) and Neighborhood Development, Inc. She has also developed teen technology programs in conjunction with the Science Museum of Minnesota (for more information, see this article in School Library Journal). Thanks to Library Journal for introducing me to two librarians doing great work in my own neck of the woods.

I'm delighted to see the impressive and indefatigable David Rothman on the list. LJ highlights Rothman's LibWorm, which is indeed a very handy aggregator and search engine for RSS feeds in in Libraryland. As a library professional in a academic medical library, however, I rely heavily upon Rothman's excellent blog to keep me current about all things pertaining to "Medical Librarianship and Web Geekery".

I'm very interested to learn more about the health education and outreach work to Hispanic communities of Annabelle V. Núñez at the University of Arizona, such as the Arizona Hispanic Center of Excellence, created in partnership with the University of Arizona College of Medicine. I would love to see more academic medical librarians and libraries doing this kind of work in their communities.

Even though he isn't a librarian, Tim Spalding of LibraryThing is most deservedly a Mover and Shaker for showing us all what libraries could be doing with social apps, tagging, personalized virtual collections, integration with Google Books and just plain making data about books fun and findable. Sometimes, it takes an outsider to show us what is possible.

Congratulations to all of the 2008 Movers and Shakers!

Looking ahead to next year, it would be great to see some of our colleagues from outside the United States on this list. Submit your nomination here. Also, maybe someone could give the nice folks at Library Journal a little refresher course on Web site usability so that they pay a little more attention to their site design.

Update: Cindi at Citegeist is adding to the aggregate knowledge of the hive mind by creating a Google spreadsheet to collate date about the Movers and Shakers from 2002-2008. If you want to help gather this data, please let her know.