NCBI has revamped the My Bibliography and Other Citations feature in My NCBI. Formerly under the category Bibliographies within the My Saved Data section, My Bibliography and Other Citations are now grouped under the Collections section. Features have been added to facilitate maintaining your own authored papers or populating collections by specific authors. More information is available in this NLM Technical Bulletin article.

An archive copy of the 2009 PubMed Redesign webcast, that was broadcast on October 6 and 7, 2009, is now available. Go to the Distance Education Program Resources page on the NLM web site. This is also linked from NN/LM PSR Distance Learning page (under NLM Distance Learning Resources) which is linked from our Training and Educational Opportunities page.

The updated editions of both PubMed and Gateway/CT.gov workbooks are now available at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/web_based.html

The brief PubMed handouts, (trifolds) have also been revised at http://nnlm.gov/psr/training/handouts.html

The National Library of Medicine (NLM), with support from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has released a beta version of Pillbox, a resource intended to enhance patient safety via an identification and reference system for solid dosage medications. Check this out at http://pillbox.nlm.nih.gov. Pillbox combines pharmaceutical data from the FDA and NLM with high resolution images, enabling rapid identification of unknown medications. This system is designed for use by emergency physicians, first responders, other health care providers, Poison Control Center staff, and concerned citizens. However, Pillbox is only in beta and is not yet ready for clinical use because the Pillbox images are not part of the Structured Product Label (FDA-approved drug label) and have not been verified by each manufacturer. NLM is working with the FDA to resolve this issue.

Google released Google Wave, a new real-time collaboration and communication tool, to 100,000 beta testers yesterday. If you’re not one of the early testers but are curious about what Google Wave can do, check out this detailed description in the LifeHacker blog:

http://lifehacker.com/5370738/google-wave-first-look

The Ribbit Wave gadget for conducting conference calls sounds particularly interesting!

WISER is a system designed to assist first responders in hazardous material incidents. WISER provides a wide range of information on hazardous substances, including substance identification support, physical characteristics, human health information, and containment and suppression advice.

As of 8/21/09, the 4.3 version of WISER is available for download or via WebWISER. Here are the key new items:

WISER for Windows has a new and improved user interface.

• View your results and data side by side.
• Select and view substance faster and easier using WISER’s new enhanced data menu.
• View and arrange multiple substances at once.
• Compare substances directly using a synchronized data menu.
• Use WISER’s new history feature to revisit your substance selections.

All WISER platforms include data updates based on the latest Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB), Radiation Event Medical Management (REMM), Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) for biological agents, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Acute Exposure Guideline Levels (EPA AEGLs) content.

More information is available in http://wiser.nlm.nih.gov/whats_new_4_3.html.

Connie Schardt, President of the Medical Library Association, recently posted the following notice to several listservs. Her main point is importnat enough to reprint here.

“An interesting blog post: — How Hospitals are Quietly Leading the Way with Social Media at http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/09/how-hospitals-are-quietly-leading-the-way-with-social-media/. Perhaps attitudes are starting to change about the use of social media within hospitals.”

A six-minute quick tour, Library Submission Utility: An Introduction, and a two-minute quick tour, Retrieving Your Password for the Library Submission Utility, are now available under the Training and Promotion section of the LinkOut for Libraries homepage and on the Distance Education Program Resources page. These quick tours require the Adobe Flash^™ Player and were created using Qarbon’s ViewletBuilder^™.

[Reprinted from the NLM Technical Bulletin, September 22, 2009]

Google Sidewiki is a new addition to the Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Sidewiki lets you read and post comments about web pages. Google is promoting this as a way to “help and learn from others as you browse the Web” (see http://tinyurl.com/lkbxbw). You can also share a Sidewiki comment via Facebook, Twitter, email, or Web link. Note that Sidewiki only works if you install the Google Toolbar into your browser (Firefox and Internet Explorer only).

To download the Google Toolbar with Sidewiki, go to http://www.google.com/sidewiki. If you try it, please post your comments about the tool on the NewsBits blog!

MedlinePlus launched HealthDay TV today, a new multimedia feature for the health news section of the Web site. Each weekday, MedlinePlus will display a new HealthDay TV news video, covering the latest news in medical research in an easy-to-understand, consumer-friendly format. In addition to the weekday videos, a Saturday summary video will appear as a wrap-up of the previous week’s headlines. The HealthDay TV videos are only available on the English version of MedlinePlus.

Please visit the MedlinePlus News page to see the new video content: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/newsbydate.html.

[From an email message from Naomi Miller, Manager, Consumer Health Information, National Library of Medicine]