The following article comes with permission from David Rothman’s excellent blog, davidrothman.net: Exploring Medical Librarianship and Web Geekery.

I subscribe to a bunch of mailing lists because they frequently contain useful information, but being subscribed to these lists using the email account provided by our hospital would be problematic. The volume of postings on some lists would clutter up the acount, making it more difficult to manage and making it more likely I’d miss other, more important emails from inside our organization.

So I subscribe to lists using a Gmail account. Here’s why:

• Separating list emails into a separate account allows me to treat them, as a whole, in a different manner than emails from higher-priority senders (patrons, co-workers, etc.). This lets me keep my attention focused where it needs to be.
• Because list emails are in a separate account, I also never have to annoy other list subscribers with “out-of-office” messages that get sent to whole list- because there’s never need to turn on an “out-of-office” message for this account.
• Threaded conversation: Instead of having one line per each email received, Gmail inboxes have one line for each conversation. That means that my Gmail lists inbox doesn’t get as cluttered. It also lets me efficiently manage whole conversations instead of individual emails, even if a particular email is sent to multiple lists I subscribe to. Example image below shows that all (23) emails on the topic of “abortion” being made a stopword in POPLINE are one (expandable) line item in my Gmail inbox:
• Mute function: If there’s a particular conversation(/thread) that I’m not interested in continuing to follow, I can “mute” the conversation and not need to see any further emails in that thread.
  
• Gmail’s search capabilities are awesome. If I want to find a MEDLIB-L email I remember was sent by Michelle Kraft about OvidSP, I can search for label:medlib-l from:Kraft OvidSP and find it really, really quickly.
• Gmail’s filters are powerful and easy to use.
  • Assigning labels: You can set up your Gmail filters to automatically assign colorful labels based on information that lets you scan your email quickly. For example, you could set your account up to automatically assign colored labels based on which list the conversation is from.
  • Forwarding based on content: You can combine Gmail’s great searching and filtering to monitor your list subscriptions. Say you subscribe to multiple lists, but only really want to pay attention if Young Adult services are mentioned. I can create a filter from the search for young OR youth OR “YA” and set any hits from that search to be automatically forwarded to my primary email address so it comes to my attention. Imagine the time saved by not having to manually look through all those emails for mentions of the topic I want to follow.

Bonus tip: Would you rather read your list email information in your feed aggregator? Set your lists Gmail account to forward the emails to MailBucket, and MailBucket will give you the content in an RSS feed.

The new Health Care Notification Network system was created by Medem of San Francisco, California. It is supported by a group of pharmaceuticals, insurance firms, organizations, and medical centers, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, J and J, as well as the American College of Surgeons, among others (full list at http://www.hcnn.net/docs/HCNNSupporters.pdf). The network will be using email to quickly disseminate time sensitive drug safety alert information to health care professionals.

• HCNN replaces the current, paper-based alerts sent to physicians and other healthcare providers via U.S. mail.
• Alerts include medication recalls, warnings and national public health emergencies.
• HCNN fulfills new FDA guidance for electronic communication of patient safety notification and is supported by medical liability carriers, U.S. medical societies, national patient advocacy groups, health plans and many other national healthcare organizations that are dedicated to improved patient safety.
• HCNN protects healthcare provider privacy. No email addresses will be sold or disclosed to any third parties.

Registration for U.S. physicians and other health care providers is available immediately at http://www.hcnn.net. For more information about the HCNN and online patient safety Alert services, see http://www.hcnn.net.

We’ve made some changes to SEA Currents in the hopes that the newsletter will be easier to use and to make it more interactive.

First we’ve opened Comments to the world. All you need to do is enter the name you wish to appear on the comments-a real name, or a nickname, or whatever you like, and an email address. The email address will not show up on the public post, but is meant to keep machines from posting comments directing us to online drugstores or even less savory locations. So, please, comment away! (If your comments do not show up immediately, do not panic, our comment filter may believe that your comment is comment spam and is holding on to it for an administrator to allow it. Give us at least one business day to allow comments before emailing us to see what happened.)

Second, we now have a link on the lower left-hand side of the screen allowing readers who do not want come to our website or make use of RSS subscriptions to subscribe via email. If you register using this link, you will receive the text of SEA Currents posts as soon as they are published. If you have already registered at the SEA Currents site, please do so again, since we are not assuming that everyone who registered initially wants email notifications. To register immediately go to  the email registration page.

We hope you enjoy reading SEA Currents and that the experience has become richer for you with these additions. If you have other improvements to suggest, please let us know.

NLM now provides an e-mail notification service, PubMed Alerts, that will notify subscribers of major system problems with PubMed; its two companion databases, MeSH and Journals; and the NLM Catalog. If these databases have a significant service disruption affecting all or most users for a considerable amount of time, an alert will be issued. Alerts providing update and resolution information about a problem will be sent if warranted. This is an announcement-only e-mail notification service that will be most useful for heavy users of PubMed. (It does not include other services/databases, e.g., LinkOut, PubMed Central.) Alerts will be sent out by NLM Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time (except Federal holidays). To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@list.nih.gov. Leave the subject line blank and enter SUBSCRIBE pubmed-alerts your name in the body of the message, e.g., SUBSCRIBE pubmed-alerts jane doe. For more LISTSERV commands, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/listserv/commands.html.

NLM has released the “What’s New on MedlinePlus” page available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/whatsnew.html .

Visit the page to stay up to date on new MedlinePlus topics, podcasts, featured sites and new issues of the NIH MedlinePlus Magazine. The “What’s New” items will display for three weeks and are also available through an RSS feed. The “What’s New on MedlinePlus” page and corresponding RSS feed are available in both English and Spanish.

This page and RSS feed compliment the already-available MedlinePlus Health News RSS, which delivers press announcements and HealthDay news stories. The News RSS is available in both English and Spanish. You can access the What’s New on MedlinePlus RSS and the MedlinePlus Health News RSS from the E-mail Lists and RSS Feeds pages at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/listserv.html .

by Toni Yancey, outreach coordinator

On September 19, 2007, SE/A will be hosting its sixth hospital librarians’ webconference. These one-hour “lunch and learn” presentations allow attendees an opportunity to learn about new and important issues in hospital librarianship. To make them relevant, hospital librarians from the region can recommend topics to be covered and Toni Yancey, your exhibit coordinator extraordinaire, will find the appropriate speaker.

Previous speakers have included Dan Doody from Doody Enterprises on collection development, Tina Joy from the American Nurse Association on magnet recognition, and most recently, Dan Wilson, chair of the SE/A Emergency Preparedness Task Force, on emergency preparedness.

Our speaker for September 19 is Dr. Timothy Cain from the Center for Knowledge Management at the Ohio State University (OSU). He will be discussing knowledge management in general and how it is conceived at OSU. Dr. Cain co-wrote an article for the November 2005 issue of Academic Medicine on managing knowledge and technology. We will also hear from Katherine Stemmer Frumento, MLA representative to the Joint Commission, on the proposed changes to the knowledge/information management standards.

If you are an SE/A hospital librarian please plan to join us on September 19, 2007 at 12 noon Eastern Time. Point your browser to https://webmeeting.nih.gov/knowledge/. Remember to log in as a guest but enter your first and last name.

Just a reminder that the funding deadline for the following awards is August 24:

• Library Improvement Award
• Express Follow-Up Awards
• Express Planning Awards
• Express Katrina/Delta Awards
• Express Welcome Awards

All applicants must be SE/A Network members to apply.

Visible Human Project

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/cbm/visible_human_2007.htmlThe Visible Human Project was formulated in response to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) 1986 Long-Range Plan that challenged NLM staff to investigate the concept of an electronic image library. The Visible Human Data Sets are complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional data sets which allow the computer reconstruction of any part of the normal male and female bodies. The data sets consist of transverse CT, MRI, and cryosection images.

The Visible Human Data Sets may be used without charge, but a license with the NLM is required. In return for use of the data sets, the user must credit the NLM in any derived product and must send a copy of the product to the NLM. Many data set users display their products and research on their Web sites and have notified the Library of their availability. The NLM has created links to these user sites from its own Visible Human Project Web site at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html. This provides an access point to applications, sources, products, tools, and mirror sites using images from the Visible Human Project. The Visible Human Project has become an open, community-based project. It is in this spirit that NLM created this Visible Human Project bibliography. This bibliography includes and updates a previous edition made available in conjunction with the Third Visible Human Conference held in October 2000. It contains citations to the published literature that we have been able to identify through March 2007. Additionally, it includes citations from the Insight Toolkit (ITK), an open source, freely available, object-oriented software package for medical image processing, segmentation, and registration.

This publication is not copyrighted and may be freely reproduced. However any reproductions of this bibliography, in whole or in part, should include all credits. If you wish to cite this bibliography, the correct format is:

Burke, Cynthia; Patrias, Karen, compilers. Visible Human Project [bibliography on the Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2007 May [cited YYYY MMM DD]. (Current bibliographies in medicine; 2007-1). 912 citations from January 1987 through March 2007. Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/cbm/visiblehuman2007.html

Skill Kit: Keeping Up with What’s New@NLM

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj07/mj07_keeping_up.html

Subscribe now to the NLM-Announces weekly list of new and updated pages on the NLM Web site, MedlinePlus, HSTAT, PubMed, and NLM Anonymous FTP server to keep up with what’s going on at NLM. The following information will assist you in discovering RSS feeds, listservs, and Web pages that will help you keep up with your favorite or often-used NLM resources. SpecialQuery

Veterinary Search Added to PubMed Special Queries

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj07/mj07_vet.html

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) Special Queries page now includes a link to a new subject page for veterinary and animal health literature. The Special Queries directory provides links to either special search interfaces, or pre-sets the Limit function of the standard PubMed interface to the selected subject or journal subset. Areas of coverage for veterinary and animal health include:

• veterinary medicine
• animal models
• alternatives to animal testing
• laboratory animals
• animal welfare
• animal hospitals
• pets or companion animals
• domestic and farm animals
• wildlife
• exotic animals
• apiculture
• aquaculture
• general zoonoses
• animal behavior and psychology
• animal nutrition
• animal diseases
• animal toxicology and parasitology

The MEDLINE/PubMed Search and Veterinary Information Resources page offers a comprehensive PubMed search including subject terms and veterinary journal titles. The strategy uses MeSH headings to retrieve indexed citations, plus title words to obtain OLDMEDLINE and unindexed citations. Historical citations from PubMed Central may also be retrieved.

(more…)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=gap

The National library of medicine has introduced dbGaP a new database designed to archive and distribute data from genome-wide association (GWA) studies. GWA studies explore the association between specific genes (genotype information) and observable traits, such as blood pressure and weight, or the presence or absence of a disease or condition (phenotype information). Connecting phenotype and genotype data provides information about genes that may be involved in a disease process or condition, which can be critical for better understanding the disease and for developing new diagnostic methods and treatments.

dbGaP, the database of Genotype and Phenotype provides a central location to see all study documentation and to view summaries of the measured variables in an organized and searchable web format. The database also provides pre-computed analyses of the level of statistical association between genes and selected phenotypes. Genotype data are obtained by using high-throughput genotyping arrays to test subjects’ DNA for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), areas of the genome that have been found to vary among humans. The database was developed by and is managed by NCBI, the National Center for Biotechnology Information.