Reinvention - a mantra for our times (podcast from TED Radio Hour)

What happens if you find your work or personal life upended? One option is to reimagine  or reinvent how you define yourself. TED Radio Hour shares stories about people who had to do just that. 

"Change is hard. Transitions can be tough. But they're also opportunities to discover and reimagine what you thought you knew. In her first episode, Manoush Zomorodi explores the power of reinvention. Guests include OK Go lead singer Damian Kulash Jr., former college gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos Field, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, and entrepreneur Nick Hanauer."

Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science: Infographic

A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science 

From Compound Chem:  "This graphic looks at the different factors that can contribute towards ‘bad’ science – it was inspired by the research I carried out for [a different project,] where many articles linked the compound to causing breast cancer, referencing scientific research which drew questionable conclusions from their results."  Read more ...

Ask a mortician

I'm currently reading (and thoroughly enjoying) Caitlin Doughty's book Smoke gets in your eyes & other lessons from the crematory.  Death is a scary subject.  But Doughty's honest and direct explanations make it a little less so.

Check out this video from her Ask a Mortician web series, where she does her part to curb some of the rampant misinformation surrounding the pandemic.  (Keep in mind this video was filmed back in April; the death tolls in New York have significantly declined since then.) 

The New & Improved PubMed (R) is Here!

Guest post by the PubMed Team at the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information.

This article first appeared on the NLM Musings blog on May 12, 2020.  

Since our last blog post, our PubMed coders have been hard at work preparing for the full transition to the new and improved PubMed. The latest features have been added, and beginning May 18, you can experience the new PubMed too!

The new PubMed features a modern interface with enhanced search results, including highlighted text snippets to help you preview an abstract while scanning your results list, and updated web elements for easier navigation. The new Best Match sort order uses advanced machine-learning technology and a new relevance search algorithm to bring you the top-ranked results.

All of these improvements are intended to connect you with the world’s leading sources of biomedical information faster and easier than ever before.

A Great Experience for All Devices

Staying connected is more important than ever. That’s why it was one of our primary goals to deliver the same great experience to mobile as well as desktop devices.

Whether you want to create an RSS feed to keep you up to date, save items to a My NCBI collection, or have your perfectly-crafted search automatically deliver the latest results, the responsive design means you can have it all from your phone and your laptop. In fact, responses from our mobile users were so overwhelmingly positive, we decommissioned the old, separate mobile site this past March.

Same as it Ever Was

Once the new PubMed becomes the default site, your existing links will be automatically redirected — meaning you won’t need to manually update your links to PubMed citations or search results. Your My NCBI saved searches and collections will continue to work in the new PubMed.

Want to Start Learning to Use the New PubMed?

We recognize that even positive changes can be challenging to adapt to, so we added several resources to help you, and the people you support, navigate the new site. From training to technical support, we’ve got you covered.

Please take a minute to read the New PubMed Transition FAQs. This page is likely to answer your general questions about the transition.

Our Trainer’s Toolkit provides you with instructional materials that you can customize and share. Whether you want to learn about the new PubMed for your own use or to train others, this is a great place to start. The series of nine quick tours, each only 1 to 4 minutes long, can be viewed online or embedded in course management software. You’ll also find slide decks, handouts, and webinar recordings all designed for sharing and reuse.

How PubMed® Works is a series of four 90-minute online classes offered by NLM and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Recordings will be available for viewing after each session ends for those who can’t attend or would like to view the material again.

The comprehensive PubMed User Guide is available from the homepage and under the “Help” link on every page in PubMed. It starts with a list of frequently asked questions, allowing you to jump to short, easy-to-follow instructions for finding and using your favorite features. As with our other resources, you can copy the text into your own training materials, trifolds, and user guides.

We’re here to help

Click on the green Feedback button on any screen in the new PubMed to write to the help desk. When the Feedback button is retired, the NLM Support Center link will remain on every page in PubMed. That is the best way to let us know what is — and isn’t — working for you.

We’re committed to keeping you informed! Subscribe to the NLM Technical Bulletin and PubMed New and Noteworthy for the latest news and new releases.

We’re just getting started!

We’re always looking for ways to improve PubMed. Just as we’ve done for the past 24 years, we’ll continue to add features and data to stay current as technology, publishing standards, and our users’ needs evolve.

Please think about other ways that NLM can help you, and share your ideas with us. 

Pandemic Part 2: A Trip to Philadelphia's Mutter Museum - JN Learning

Photo from The Spit Spreads Death Exhibit 

at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.

Pandemic Part 2: A Trip to Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum

Educational Objective
To understand the responsibilities of a citizen during a pandemic

JN Listen

A new exhibit on the 1918 flu pandemic asks: What is an individual’s responsibility to their community during a pandemic? Exhibit curator Jane Boyd and museum manager Nancy Hill take Jennifer Abbasi on a tour of the medical museum’s new exhibit just weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak first emerged.

Pandemic Part 1: 1918 Flu Pandemic and COVID-19 (JN Learning)

Other helpful links:

• The Mutter Museum
• Spit Spreads Death Exhibit

Free conference - NASIG 2020

Reposting from Eril (Electroninc Resources in Libraries) list-serv. 

Many of the sessions are relevant to health science librarians including working with COUNTER 5, streaming media, website accessibility, open access, authority control, and much more. 

===========================================

The NASIG Executive Board is pleased to announce that we will hold the 35th Annual NASIG Conference online, June 9-11, 2020. We are even more pleased to announce that the conference will be free to all attendees, thanks to the generous contributions of our sponsors.

The synchronous online conference will include an opening session featuring vision speaker Janetta Waterhouse, along with 14 sessions originally scheduled for the in-person conference. The full program can be found at https://nasig2020.sched.com/.

In addition to our synchronous event, many of our other presenters will be recording their talks for on-demand viewing. We will encourage discussion of these events on the NASIG blog. The entire conference program will be made freely available on YouTube after the live event.

Attendees can register for the synchronous conference here: https://forms.gle/CWP8UXrSsZsiudXX8

The Board also wishes to thank the members of our Program Planning, Conference Planning, Continuing Education, and Communications committees, all of whom have come together to make this event happen on a very short timeline.

Thanks also to you, our members, for your continued support. We hope to see you online in June!

NASIG is an independent organization working to advance and transform the management of information resources. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate and improve the distribution, acquisition, and long-term accessibility of information resources in all formats and business models. Visit http://www.nasig.org/ for more information.

A Physician's Guide to Navigating a Bureaucracy -

A Physician's Guide to Navigating a Bureaucracy (via Clinical Key)RS

Download PDFDike Drummond MD

by Dike Drummond, MD.
Family Practice Management, 2020-05-01, Volume 27, Issue 3, Pages 26-30, 
Copyright © 2020 The American Academy of Family Physicians

"To get what you need to create a more ideal practice, you must learn to navigate the bureaucracy of your organization. Here's how ..."

_______________________________________________________________

I stumbled across this article earlier this week while I was sending out eTOCs, and thought it had some good advice for Medical Librarians, too, as we are all attempting to operate efficiently and get things done within the much larger context of our matrix-sized organizations.    

The article offers some pointers for managing your boss by understanding your boss, and yourself, and then building your relationship -- not just when things go wrong, or when you want / need something.  Find out what their goals are, and how you fit into that bigger picture.    If you want to try something new, couch it as an innovation project.

It also offers 5 tips for maintaining a position of influence within your organization:

     1. Stop acting like a doctor. 

     2. Know when to ask forgiveness vs. permission.

• Administrators have several concerns you must honor: money, staff, policy, and mission. If you need something that does not require more money or more staff, does not violate policy, and is consistent with the mission, just do it. If anyone objects later, beg forgiveness (or ask to be an innovation pilot project).

     3. Don't be a whiner.
     4. Remember the continuation rule ...

• Every interaction you have with your boss sets the stage for your next encounter. If you end on a positive note, your next meeting will continue on that same positive trajectory — even if your discussion is about a problem. 

     5. Avoid the "disruptive" label.

If you follow these steps, you may have some pleasantly surprising results.   This general approach has worked well for me through the years, with a number of managers.    

Now if I could just figure out how to find the right people to get things done in the matrix ...  

What do you think?  Has this approach worked for you?  Why or why not?

CoronaVirus BedTime Story / An Amazing Story / The Great Realisation

Recommended by WHSLA Member Kellee Selden as a video worth sharing.
Thanks, Kellee!

Contact Tracing is the Key to Reopening America - But how does it actually work?

Contact tracing is key to reopening America. But how does it actually work? (Wednesday, April 29)
States across the country are laying the groundwork to launch massive contact tracing efforts to identify people who may have contracted the new coronavirus. Some public health experts say the efforts are crucial to relaxing social distancing measures intended to curb America's Covid-19 epidemic. But how does it work?