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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
The 2009 Horizon Report discusses six emerging technologies and practices that are likely to have considerable impact on higher education, and could be widely implemented for teaching, learning, research, content sharing, social activities, and creative expression in the next one to five years.
The research paper is a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). Six areas that have been identified are mobiles, cloud computing, geo-everything, personal Web, semantic-aware applications, and smart objects. Definition and examples of how each technology is being or could be used are presented in the report. It also identifies key trends and critical challenges that facing education and learning organizations over the five-year period.
The report is available free of charge and under Creative Commons license. You can access the full report at http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report.pdf or http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5612.pdf
You can read how the Project Advisory Board manages the process of selecting topics for the 2009 report on Horizon Wiki, where related resources are also listed.
Posted in General (all entries), Technology | Comments Off
Monday, January 26th, 2009
A January 2009 PEW Internet & American Life Project report, Adult and Social Network Websites, shows that in the past 3 years, more and more adult Internet users have started using social network sites. The figures rose from 8% usage in February 2005 to 35% in December 2008.
The survey results indicate that younger adults are much more likely to use social networks than their older counterparts, and the majority use the networks for personal instead of professional interests. For those who do use it for both personal and professional purposes, they usually maintain multiple profiles on different sites. MySpace is the most popular social network site among adult users.
With 75% of online adults between 18 and 24 and 57% between 25 and 34 having a social network profile, there is huge potential for libraries to reach patrons through these sites.
Here are examples of some regional libraries with profiles on social network sites:
For more information, see: Hendrix D, Chiarella D, Hasman L, Murphy S, Zafron ML. Use of Facebook in academic health sciences libraries. J Med Libr Assoc. 2009 Jan;97(1):44-7.
Posted in General (all entries), NLM Announcements, Technology | Comments Off
Friday, January 16th, 2009
The Medical Library Association (MLA) Social Networking Software Task Force (official blog: http://sns.mlanet.org/blog/) has a class, Media Sharing, that focuses primarily on screencasting and how you can use the technology to expand and promote your information services. It’s a self learning activity and you can log in any time to complete the work during Jan 19 - 25th. No registration is required.
The MLA Social Networking Software Task Force is offering a series of classes on Web 2.0 tools. You can find the complete schedule on their blog. Classes are free to current 2009 MLA members.
Posted in General (all entries), Technology | Comments Off
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Health games are designed using gaming technologies and principles, to improve participants’ awareness of health related issues, or to increase their engagement in physical activities.
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Posted in General (all entries), Technology | Comments Off
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
Many people are using the Internet as a diagnostic tool to find information on health conditions, disease symptoms, as well as treatment suggestions. Microsoft recently published a new study on medical web-searching behavior and how search results from popular Web search engines can affect decision making.
Among other results, the study found that answers retrieved from Internet search engines can often lead users to believe that common symptoms are likely the result of serious illnesses and to increase the anxiety of people who have little or no medical training.
You can access the full article at http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?type=Technical%20Report&id=1595
Posted in Consumer Health, General (all entries), Technology | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
Google.org’s Flu Trends (http://www.google.org/flutrends/) tracks when and where questions about flu symptoms are asked all over the country. They have discovered that a large number of flu-related searches from a particular region may be estimating an outbreak of the flu in that region. In fact, last year Google Flu Trends estimated flu levels one to two weeks earlier than the CDC reported them.
The New York Times: “Google Uses Searches to Track Flu’s Spread”
Google.org: “How does this work?“
Posted in Consumer Health, Emergency Preparing and Response, General (all entries), Public Health, Technology | Comments Off
Sunday, November 16th, 2008
If you are thinking about putting your library or organization’s own website on web-capable mobile devices like iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Treo, or Motorola’s RAZR, etc., here is a project you should look at: MIT Mobile Web (http://mobi.mit.edu/about/).
This project gives you a great sense of how to present the web on mobile devices with a sleek and clean interface. It provides access to several categories including Events Calendar, Emergency Information, and latest news on classes.
It’s a free service and you just simply type in “m.mit.edu” in your device’s browser. If you don’t have a mobile device, no problem. Use http://mobi.mit.edu/about/preview.html to preview it on your desktop or laptop. I just tried it with an iPhone. Results? “Cool!”.
Posted in General (all entries), Technology | Comments Off
Sunday, November 16th, 2008
In the November/December 2008 issue of Marketing Library Services, Aaron Schmidt and Sarah Houghton-Jan wrote about how to bring traffic to your library’s website. It provides useful tips and ideas such as offering relevant services or interesting content on your site, participating in community conversations such as commenting on local blogs, providing services to attract and interact with current or potential library members, listing your site on directories where people are searching, etc.
To read the whole article, click http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov08/Schmidt_Houghton-Jan.shtml.
Posted in General (all entries), Technology | Comments Off
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
The National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) at the National Library of Medicine was created to improve the collection, storage, analysis, retrieval, and dissemination of health services research. Designed for health practitioners, health policy makers, payers and information professionals, the NICHSR website (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr) provides access to a variety of databases and retrieval services including:
Pilot Health Services Research Filters Project
Researchers, clinicians, health policy analysts and planners can use these specialized PubMed Health Services Research (HSR) searches to find information on healthcare quality and costs.
(more…)
Posted in General (all entries), Public Health, Technology | Comments Off
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
The NN/LM SCR office is offering two classes at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Library, in San Antonio, TX on October 20, 2008.
Public Health Information on the Web
8:30 am – 12:30 pm
Class description: This hands-on class will highlight web resources tailored to the public health workforce. Topics include: the role of information in public health, resources for health education and promotion, evidence-based practice and data and statistics.
Upon completion, class attendees will receive 4 hours MLA CE credit. For more information on the class: http://nnlm.gov/training/publichealth/
Can You Hear Me Now? How to Make a Podcast
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Class description: Thinking about how to promote your services and reach out to more people? Want to learn how podcasts can help and how to make your own? This hands-on class is designed to provide a fun yet informative introduction to podcasting and how you can utilize this technology in your library services, to enable your users to access the information whenever they want, wherever they want and however they want it. Basic steps and suggestions on how to make a podcast will be covered and students will be able to enjoy hands-on practice on popular audio recording and editing software and make their first personal podcast!
Upon completion, class attendees will receive 2 hours MLA CE credit. For more information on the class: http://nnlm.gov/training/podcast/index.html
To register for these classes: http://nnlm.gov/scr/training/register.html
All classes are free and open to anyone.
Posted in Classes, General (all entries), Public Health, Technology | Comments Off
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