Author Archives: kettermane

Streaming Video Sources

Most consumers of web content are familiar with YouTube, Vimeo, and other free sources of streaming videos. These sites are really fun to browse and get a little lost in when you’ve got free time, but what about when you want to watch a video on an important topic in your area of research, for class assignments, or some other project where you need something authoritative and instructional?
ECU Libraries subscribe to a number of authoritative video sources that cover a huge variety of topics, including the health sciences. Some of these sources include:

AccessSurgery – shows the latest surgical techniques

Counseling and Therapy in Video – view counseling sessions and techniques, lectures and interviews

Nurse Theorists: Portraits of Excellence – interviews and histories on nursing’s premiere scholars

Sports Medicine and Exercise Science in Video – videos on injury assessment and treatment

Films on Demand – covers a large subject area, but includes films from the likes of PBS, HBO, and other credible sources on health sciences topics

Another excellent aspect of these video streaming services is that they can be accessed from off-campus with a PirateID and many provide a direct link to the actual videos which makes them easy to link from within BlackBoard or a class website. If you’re interested in knowing more about how to access and use these videos, you can Contact Us for more information.

Exposing ECU’s scholarly activities – The ScholarShip

Lots of universities these days are collecting the scholarly output of their faculty in what are called Institutional Repositories, or IR’s. The librarians at ECU have created an IR called The ScholarShip, and encourage not just faculty, but all ECU staff and students to deposit their work. And by “work”, we’re talking about papers, documents, presentation slides, and any other documented activity created while working or studying at ECU.

The deposit process is easy and only takes about the same amount of time as it would to upload a picture on a photo sharing website. And if you ever leave East Carolina University the file will be maintained, so if you want to share the link to your work with others or add it to your CV, you can be assured it will not change. And anyone doing a Google search can find your work. So, let’s say there’s someone else out there in the world doing the same kind of research you are doing – if they Google the search terms that you use to tag your work in your ScholarShip records, they will be able to easily discover your scholarly activities There’s lots more information about this on the deposit process page: http://thescholarship.ecu.edu/deposit.

The ScholarShip is also now the home of ECU’s theses and dissertations. If you want to see what our graduating students have researched and created while at ECU, please check it out – theses, dissertations, and all other types of documents are browsable here.

Open Access Week 2011

Open Access Week is a global event held the week of October 24th, 2011, which the ECU Libraries will be celebrating for the third year in a row. It is our opportunity to promote the potential benefits of Open Access to the academic and research community at ECU.

So, what exactly is Open Access (OA)? It encompasses the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as needed. OA literature is digital, online, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The ECU Libraries believe OA has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted and that it has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.OA Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward open sharing with the advancement of policy changes on the local level.

This year the Libraries will be sharing brief, energetic videos promoting the principles of OA, starring some of our own ECU faculty, and displaying posters on the “Cost of Research Today”. For more information on the global OA Week movement, check out http://www.openaccessweek.org/.

Library e-books on your device

Like many libraries these days, Laupus has a healthy amount of ebooks available in our collection. Our ebooks can be found in our catalog (you can search for them just like any other book title), in One Search, or on our e-resources page.

We’ve noticed an increase in questions from our patrons about whether or not ebooks from our collection can be installed or viewed on e-readers like Kindles and Nooks. Technically, the answer to that question is no. Laupus (and the other ECU Libraries for that matter) do not purchase ebook titles for our collection with the intention that patrons can download them to a particular ebook reader. There are just too many e-readers out there for us to keep up with all of them. When we purchase ebooks, the books are really intended to be read on a desktop computer from the browser or for download to the desktop. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.

If you are one of those folks who want to try to read a Laupus ebook on a device other than your desktop computer, there are a few things to consider. Ebooks are hosted on various online platforms and each platform works a little differently than the next. For instance, titles hosted on the NetLibrary platform look and behave a little differently than Ebrary titles; Ebrary titles look and behave a little differently than MD Consult’s ebook titles; MD Consult’s ebook titles look and behave differently than Psychiatry Online’s titles, etc. Also, some of these platforms require you to download software to read the book. If you happen to have an e-reader, smartphone, or other device that doesn’t support that particular software download then you won’t be able to read the book on that device. Many ebooks work a little more simply than that because they are readable in an internet browser. If your device supports a browser, you may be able to read the book that way.  Another option you may have is to read the book in .pdf format. If your reader supports .pdfs you may be able to view the book on your device.

Since there are so many proprietary ebook platforms and ebook readers out there on the market, you can see where all these different options render it difficult to tell if a particular title will work on your particular device. If you’re in doubt you can always contact us.

Emerging trends in libraries and how they impact you, the patron

Each November, acquisitions librarians, vendors, and publishers gather in Charleston, SC to discuss emerging trends in collections and technology. This year at the Charleston Conference a couple of trends emerged in the assorted presentations which have implications for research in the health sciences.

eBooks

eBooks are not exactly new; in fact, they are so not new that there were no “should we or shouldn’t we” discussions about their staying power. The feeling is that eBooks are here to stay. The new trend is whether or not we choose to buy them or let you, the patron, buy them with our money. This is what is called “patron driven acquisitons” and it works where you, the patron, pull up a record in the catalog and decide whether or not you want to see the entire book. If you do, you basically click a button and buy the title with library funds. There’s also options to rent in this same fashion.

Discovery Tools

Librarians are not unaware of the power of Google. We embrace it and use tools like Google Scholar to help us open up access to our electronic collections. There is a new category of resources called discovery tools which work very much in the same way as Google – a one search approach to searching all of a library’s collection at one time, along with other great online content. ECU Libraries are riding the wave of this trend right now because we’ve implemented a discovery tool on our website, called One Search. Check it out and see if it helps you find the information you need in a hurry.

Social Networking and Research

An interesting fact – most researchers do use social networking applications, but only at the start and end of the research process, and mostly as a way to disseminate what they’ve produced. However, comment fields and peer-review type feedback options are starting to infiltrate journal sites like NEJM. What implications that this trend will have on scholarly research remains to be seen.

We will continue to monitor these kinds of trends at Laupus Library so that we can provide you with the highest quality and most efficient access to information for your research needs.

iPad Use in the Operating Room

The iPad, though not yet ubiquitous, is becoming a more visible tool to increase productivity in the workplace. This could not be more true than in the healthcare setting, and one area in particular where the the iPad and its applications are being tested is the operating room (OR).

With its large screen, the iPad becomes an effective way to view images at the point-of-care. In the OR this can mean viewing anatomy programs during surgical procedures and reviewing a patient’s radiology images. Doctors also have about 2,000 healthcare-related apps to peruse in iTunes and an entire iBooks bookstore with ready reference information they might need in a pinch. A particular consideration for iPad use in the OR is the need for the iPad to be as sterile as possible. iMedicalApps tested an iPad in the sterile OR environment and their results showed that despite bagging the device and using latex gloves to manipulate the screen, the iPad worked just fine and remained sterile. Want to see that in action? Check out this video from an Japanese surgeon using the iPad in his OR.

Not everything about the iPad is perfect for the OR setting. In a news article by Eric Berger from the July 2010 Annals of Emergency Medicine, two of the drawbacks mentioned were lack of a swappable battery and the iPad’s relative fragility. These two flaws would effect any user of the device, but in the OR setting could be especially troublesome.

Have any thoughts on these issues? Feel free to post comments below.

Scholarly Communications

Our faculty here at ECU work hard to discover new information in their research. They peer through microscopes to understand infectious disease, dig though layers of dirt on archaeological sites in remote areas of the world, pour over archival letters of long-dead politicians. The resulting conclusions they draw from these endeavors get written up in papers, delivered at conferences, blogged about, even Twittered. Publishing this data and disseminating it to the world is collectively known as scholarly communication.

Joyner and Laupus Libraries are both committed to facilitating the scholarly communications process. We’ve sponsored campus-wide lectures to publicize the open access movement in publishing. We subscribe to, organize, and deliver information for our campus community on the web and in print. We have created and maintain an Institutional Repository, known as the ScholarShip. And, of course, each day we help our faculty run literature searches and otherwise assist ECU researchers in their information-seeking.

We feel proud to be a part of this scholarly communications process and have put together a guide for those seeking more information about it. The ECU Libraries’ Scholarly Communications libguide collects information on author’s rights, peer review, open access and the ScholarShip all in one place.

APA style updates and you

Are you all as interested in style manuals as we librarians are? Probably not, but that’s why we’re librarians, right? Regardless of your level of excitedness, if you are a researcher, student, or instructor, it’s worth noting that there is a new edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, which we most commonly refer to as the APA style guide. The manual is now in its 6th edition and includes some noteworthy revisions and updates. So, before you go writing your first paper of the semester or begin grading your students’ reference pages, take note of some of the changes:

  • Check out section 6.31 Electronic Sources and Locator Information. This section explains changes in publishing models since the 5th edition was published and mentions the DOI system. To prevent this post from running on too long, just know that DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. It’s a number used to identify items like electronic journal articles in a standardized and systematic way. For examples of citing items with a DOI, refer to section 7.01 in the new manual.
  • E-books are also mentioned in the reference example section, 7.02. You’ll see ways to cite the e-version of a print book, an electronic-only book, and the e-version of a republished book.
  • Into social media or web-based resources? The 6th edition also mentions how to cite blogs, message boards, listservs, and other online communities. These examples include using a screen name as author, the proper format for YouTube videos, and how to cite comments to discussion groups. These examples are given in section 7.11.

For other revisions on writing an effective paper, working with publishers, and reference formats, please consult the new edition which is available for use at Laupus Library. You can also visit the APA Style site online at www.apastyle.org. Looking for information on other styles? Laupus has a style guide page as well.

Kindle in health education and clinical practice

Many of you may be aware of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, a product which has received a lot of attention lately. If not, here’s the lowdown: its a sleek, lightweight device which uses a paper-like display for reading electronic versions of books. You can download thousands of books from Amazon’s ever-expanding Kindle bookstore directly from the device and start reading within about 60 seconds. And, though the device is billed as an e-book reader, you are also able to download newspapers, some websites, and blogs as well.

So, what kinds of applications does the Kindle have for our healthcare community? There hasn’t been a lot of research done in this area yet, but there are some interesting commentaries and opinions online. If you’re interested, you might consider checking out the following:

  • Life as a Healthcare CIO – CIO and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School John Halamka’s blog has multiple informative posts on the device, including one on implementing Kindle support for all educational resources at the school
  • Thoughts on reading the New England Journal of Medicine and reference texts from PatrickMD.net
  • The Dental Technology Blog from the editor of Dental Products Report magazine has a number of posts about the Kindle

If you’ve used the Kindle for health education or in clinical practice, we’d like to hear about your experiences.  You are welcome to share your own thoughts in the comments section below.