The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has launched a Web content collecting initiative. The Library is selecting Web content as part of its mission to collect, preserve, and make accessible the scholarly biomedical literature, as well as resources that illustrate a diversity of philosophical and cultural perspectives not found in the technical literature. New forms of publication on the Web, such as blogs authored by doctors and patients, illuminate health care thought and practice in the 21st century. In launching this initiative, the Library is capturing and providing a unique resource for future scholarship.

The Library’s inaugural collection of Web content is “Health and Medicine Blogs,” presenting the perspectives of physicians, nurses, hospital administrators and other individuals in health care fields. The collection also includes patients chronicling their experiences with conditions such as cancer, diabetes and arthritis. The site currently contains 12 blogs, including KevinMD.com, “social media’s leading physician voice;” Not Running a Hospital, a blog by a former CEO of a large Boston hospital; e-patient Dave, a cancer survivor and leader in the participatory medicine movement; and Wheelchair Kamikaze, who writes about his personal experience living with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Guided by the NLM Collection Development Manual and other strategic collecting efforts, NLM will continue to expand its capacity to collect Web content. With this initiative NLM has taken a major new step in its mission to collect pertinent health care information of today for the benefit of research in the future. Increasingly, that information is found on the Web, which is a rapidly changing environment, where valuable and interesting materials can surface and then quickly disappear. The Library is working to ensure it can effectively collect new material in a Web environment, and guarantee the material’s permanence and availability to current and future patrons.

In launching this initiative, NLM joins many other national, state and public libraries and archives that have acknowledged the importance of preserving Web content for future generations. In addition to the Internet Archive, which has been broadly archiving the Web since 1996, dozens of libraries and cultural heritage institutions have been engaged in thematic or event-based collecting. This community has contributed to the development and use of common tools, techniques, and standards that enable the creation of Web archives. NLM has benefitted from this work and from local partners such as the Library of Congress, which is actively engaged in collecting and preserving Web content. The NLM has already been archiving portions of its own Web domain considered to be of enduring value. With this new effort, the Library is now collecting Web content that others have created.

Dan Miller, editor of Macworld.com, recently posted a video illustrating seven keyboard tricks that are helpful for every iPad user. A complete transcript and video link are featured in this MacWorld.com article. The seven tips are summarized below. Tips 1 and 3-6 also work on the iPhone.

1. Tap-and-hold for special characters. Tapping and holding on any vowel key and several consonants results in a pop-up to select variations on those characters, including accents and circumflexes. This is particularly useful for typing in languages other than English. Similarly, tapping and holding on several keys on the numeric keyboard accesses other special characters. For example, tap-and-hold on the dollar sign to see a variety of currency symbols.
2. Swipe up on some keys to insert special characters. For example, swipe up on the dollar sign to get the cents symbol.
3. Double-tap on the space bar at the end of a sentence to automatically insert a period and a space. Then begin the next sentence.
4. In Safari, to get to a site that has a top-level domain other than .com, tap-and-hold on the .COM key to see a pop-up to select .ORG, .EDU, and other domains.
5. Similarly, in Mail, to add a top-level domain at the end of an email address, tap-and-hold on the period; then select the top-level domain desired.
6. To insert a number or punctuation mark after typing a string of letters, open the numeric keyboard and slide your finger to the number desired. Then release the finger to return to the alpha keyboard.
7. Lastly, there’s the feature to split the keyboard and undock it. Tap-and-hold on the keyboard button in the lower right, and select “Undock.” Then slide the keyboard up and down to different positions on the screen. By tapping and holding the keyboard button and selecting “Split,” the keyboard will split in two. This is very handy when holding the iPad with two hands and typing with the thumbs.
   

The National Library of Medicine is excited to announce a new Twitter feed from MedlinePlus en español  – @MedlinePlusEsp.  Follow @MedlinePlusEsp for trusted health information in Spanish.  Stay up to date on the latest health news, health observances, seasonal health issues, and healthy living tips, all in Spanish.  If you have any questions about @MedlinePlusEsp, contact the MedlinePlus team at NLM via the contact form linked from every page on MedlinePlus.

Here’s a Spanish translation of the above message, in case you want to post it for a Spanish-speaking audience:

La Biblioteca Nacional de Medicina de los EE.UU (NLM) se complace en anunciar el feed de Twitter para MedlinePlus en español: @MedlinePlusEsp. Siga @MedlinePlusEsp para encontrar información confiable de salud en español. Manténgase al día de las últimas noticias, datos oportunos en el área de salud y consejos para vivir una vida saludable ¡todo en español!

Based on the success of last spring’s event, the IOM and NAE are sponsoring the 2nd annual Go Viral to Improve Health: Health Data Collegiate Challenge. Working in interdisciplinary teams that meld technological skills with health knowledge, college students can generate powerful apps to improve health for individuals and communities. A video of last year’s first-place winners presenting their app, Sleep Bot, at the 2011 Health Data Initiative Forum is available online.

IOM and NAE need your help in reaching out to students about the challenge. Information about eligibility, judging criteria, and registration is available on the IOM website and Facebook page. A downloadable and printable flyer is available to help spread the message about this year’s student challenge. You are encouraged to help get the word out by “liking” the Go Viral to Improve Health Facebook page and forwarding information about the challenge to faculty and students who may be interested in participating. This year, a total of $10,000 in prizes will be available to the student teams who develop the best new health apps. Team registration is open until February 10, 2012.

To help teams get started, the National Library of Medicine provides API (Application Programming Interface), a set of routines that an application uses to request and carry out lower-level services performed by a computer’s operating system, for many of its resources and databases. The NLM Show Off Your Apps challenge utilized NLM API to create to create innovative software applications that use the Library’s vast collection of biomedical data, including downloadable data sets, application programming interfaces (APIs).

Health DATAbytes is an online conversation featuring health experts and advocates providing examples of using data to make healthy changes to benefit communities and address health disparities. The blog postings are designed to help people with a wide range of data expertise to better understand and use data to seek funding, plan and evaluate programs, or advance public policies to promote healthier communities. In addition to the expert commentary, Health DATAbytes provides data tips and tricks, and links to upcoming data training sessions. Blog postings reflect a broad range of health topics. Recent listings include the health effects of living near major roadways, neighborhoods lacking healthy food outlets (food deserts), and the effect of state budget cuts on support services for the elderly and disabled.

Health DATAbytes is a new initiative from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, as part of its Health DATA (Data. Advocacy. Training. Assistance.) Program. The aim of this program is to make data easily understandable to a wide variety of public health and health advocacy personnel, as well as members of the general community. Another goal of the program is to increase capacity of these groups to locate and present credible data related to particular health programs.

The “Free Technology for Teachers” blog lists 10 tools that allow you to build a website for free. The posting explains, “websites are good for providing a static resource of information, blogs are good for frequent updates and communication, and a wiki is great for collaborating on the creation of a reference site” and then lists 10 tools for website creation.

The blog “Free Technology for Teachers,” at http://www.freetech4teachers.com/, provides online resources and ideas for teaching with technology. Some of the posts are specific to K-12 education but a number of posts are useful for education across the educational spectrum. You can read the blog from time to time or subscribe to their RSS feed to receive new posts.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reports on Twitter users. According to the report, 8% percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. Some of the groups who are notable for their relatively high levels of Twitter use include young adults, African-Americans and Latinos, and urbanites. See the full report at http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Twitter-Update-2010.aspx.

The March 2010 TEDxNYED talk, “The New Volunteers: Social Media, Disaster Response And You,” was presented by Andy Carvin, Senior Strategist at NPR. In this talk, Andy gave an overview of the way the Internet and Social Media tools have changed over time to create a new set of tools and resources for responding to disasters. See http://acarvin.posterous.com/video-of-my-tedxnyed-talk-the-new-volunteers.

You can now easily create QR codes with Google’s URL Shortener (http://goo.gl/). To create the QR code, append “.qr” to the end of the shortened URL in your brower’s URL bar. You can then copy the QR code image from your browser.

If you’re not familiar with QR codes, see a previous discussion of QR codes in NewsBits, see http://nnlm.gov/psr/newsbits/?p=687.