Conference on Evidence-Based Healt Care

Next Sunday I’ll be going to Oxford for the UK Conference on Evidence-based Health Care. In these busy days I sometimes wonder why I wanted to go there. It’s one of my pitfalls to find (almost) everything interesting resulting in work mounting up. But when looking at the final conference programme I get enthusiastic all over again. There will be lots of interesting presentations. I’m looking forward to it and will try to blog and/or twitter during the conference.

Where were the Librarians?

(Due to illness and other circumstances this post comes a bit late)
November the 13th and 14th the annual conference of the NVMO (Dutch Association for Medical Education) was held in Egmond, the Netherlands. If I’m not mistaken there were more than 600 attendants. All were somehow connected with the world of medical education. There were a lot of interesting sessions. For example, there were several sessions about Evidence Based Medicine, Academic Education, E-learning. And between the sessions, during the coffeebreaks, lunch and dinner there was a lot exchanging ideas, experiences (and “easy” social stuff). To me and the people I talked with it seemed so logical that medical libraries are participating in this meetings. So, where were the other librarians? Among the more than 600 participants no other library people than my boss, me and someone of the medical library of the VU University Amsterdam. If we want to be seen and to participate in the education of our medical students, for example in the field of Evidence Based Medicine, this seems the place to be.

So, you all have another chance next year November the 12th and 13th in Egmond aan Zee!

PUbMed feeds and Netvibes

For our Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology I have made a Netvibes Universe. On the page I’ve put mainly RSS feeds from PubMEd. For some reason or other the number of displayed items changed to 1 or 2 while I don’t do anything and nobody is logged in. With other feeds this doesn’t happen. The only way to switch back to the original number of items is to remove the feed completely and add it again. Anybody any suggestion?

Social Networks for Libraries

A very interesting slide show on “Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Srvices” :
“Not Just Facebook: Online Social Networks For Libraries” from Gerry McKiernan.
It is a large presentation (204 slides). The first half covers Facebook. All its applications and how to use them. The second half is dedicated to Niche Online Social Networks. It gives a list of and links to all kind of Social Networks.

Holiday!

Now finally, I have cleaned up my inbox and Netvibes-page to a somewhat satisfying degree. But I’m afraid it will not last long. I’m facing a two weeks holiday and when I’m back…
Still I will enjoy my holiday (at least, I hope so).

See you all in two weeks time!

Brown Bag Discussion

Last summer I attended the Ticer Summerschool. I had the pleasure to meet Debra Gilchrist, a very inspiring enthusiastic librarian. She talked about teaching and learning. She suggested to invite others to a brown bag discussion about a journal article on teaching/learning.

I’m very interested in the field of teaching & learning. On earlier congresses I found it always very inspiring to talk with other instructors and to exchange ideas and experiences. I want to read literature on this subject but time, time, time… There’s always something else to do. But I suppose there are colleagues who share the same interest, who wants to talk about it with others, read some literature on teaching/learning and discuss it with others, so who knows…

Today I posted a message on the discussion list of the Libraries of the University and the first enthusiastic reactions are coming in!

Twitter

Yes, I twitter too. When I first heard of Twitter I was very skeptic about it: does everybody have to know what I’m doing? But I gave in and started to try it. I like it now: not so much for private stuff, but since I’m twittering (now for some days) I saw funny stuff passing by as well as very informative stuff. Tips, interesting websites, articles and so on are passing by. I can imagine that it is an easy way to ask for ideas and solution when one’s facing a problem or wondering about something. So I keep on twittering.

Take games seriously?

Last weeks UK (the weekly magazine of the University of Groningen), no.6, contained an interview with 4 people. They answered the question whether Games should be treated in the same way as movies, music and literature. One senior lecturer: “When I see how my son values these games and why, games have nothing to do with culture.”!
The other persons being interviewed, 2 professors and a coordinator of education, exposed a more balanced view. The saw games as a subculture, as an opening up of new Horizons of as an important development.

Organising my Netvibes-page

Today I’m confronted with a big disadvantage of a Personal Start Page: you can put content on your page endlessly. That’s what I did the last weeks. I was organizing my email, looking through all the old items I had still in my inbox because they might be interesting. While looking through, I put all the interesting websites, articles, blogs and so on, on my Netvibes-page. Now my mailbox is almost empty and neat, whereas my Netvibes-page….

From Private Page to Public Page

Today an appointment with the professor for whom I made a private page in Netvibes. She was tired of all the user names and passwords she needs for all kind of accounts. That was the reason she didn’t look very much on her Netvibes-page anymore. She forgets the user name and password every time. So I proposed to add her to the Public Page (www.netvibes.com/ogcmb) I made for the department she belongs and she agreed. I hope it works fine now for her. I will contact her in several weeks for an evaluation.