Opinions of a Wolf

Slide from presentation showing What users want out of ILL. What ILL librarians think are issues with ILL currently. What a perfect world future of ILL would look like.

This year I got to go to the annual presentation by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at MLA.  NLM is an important medical library resource, as it provides many free, trustworthy health, medicine, and science research resources to the public.  The NLM Update provides information on any important changes by NLM in the last year, as well as just any information/resources they would like to highlight.

• clinicaltrials.gov
  • have data available of national origin of studies
  • you can build your own specialized view if you’d like to
  • a unique source of summary results for many trials
  • NN/LMx training for librarians coming soon
• standardization makes information more usable
• SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT)
• Genetic Testing Registry
  • 3,005 tests registered by 290 labs in 37 countries
  • useful inks for EHRs (Electronic Health Records)
  • international standard for location of genetic variations
• PubMed Health
  • more digitized guidelines
  • specifically focused on flu site
  • working on global microbial identifier for food-borne pathogens
• FY 2013 budget
  • lost 5.5% annum ($19.2 million less)
  • people are the most important NLM resource.  Call them “brain-ware.”
• Index Cat
  • XML data available for 3.7million citations
  • index journals we trust cover-to-cover to keep up
• NLM exhibits
  • “Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness” is current exhibit.
  • There is an app of the interviews portion of the exhibit available on iTunes
  • The NLM traveling exhibition program has been booked by 457 institution in 48 states.
  • The Harry Potter exhibit grew out of last-minute attempt to make science interesting to middle schoolers.
  • Traveling exhibits consist of 6 banners that can be rolled into mailing tubes for quick shipment.
  • You must do local programming to borrow an exhibit
• NLM Associate Fellowship Program
• MedPrint
  • a program to get libraries to commit to keep print runs of journals
  • check page to see what’s been saved already
• Environmental Health and Toxicology
• Disaster Information Management Research Center
• Inter-Library Loan (ILL)
  • requests down almost 50% in last 10 years in Docline
  • investigating this
  • conference call with focus groups representing:
    • hospitals
    • large academic libraries
    • special libraries
  • not planning to take Docline away
  • national survey in March 2013
    • 60% hospitals
    • agreed journals are electronic now
    • disagreement on if licenses are easy to understand
• MedlinePlus
  • 15 years old in English, 10 years old in Spanish
  • multiple language link –> follows US medical practices, also available in English translation
  • US is 37% of users
  • very active twitter account
  • mobile site
    • going through usability study
    • More Spanish speaking males use than females.  More English speaking females use than males.
    • most of us want the full site not the mobile site
• MedlinePlus Connect
  • allows EHR to send a code and get back patient-specific health information
• 5 day posting of jobs is a requirement of the government to speed up hirings.  It is not a sign that they already know who to hire.

After the NLM Update, I attended the poster sessions.  This is not something one tends to take notes at, so I don’t have very much to say about them, except that I am proud of my medical librarian friend who had a poster in the session. Go Katie!

Up next, the final plenary session! Phew!