VideoLectures is another open access academic video / media repository. Yes, we have YouTube, iTunesU, Slideshare and other related locations where folk of note (and not) are sharing some really wonderful content. Videolectures is doing something I haven’t seen before, which really impressed me.
They have the video of the lecturer, next to the slides, both synced so that they display at the appropriate times with the audio. You can download the slides as either a PDF or the original source file, and you have the outline of the presentation. AND you can embed the video What can I say? WOW!
Here is an example — a lecture on research about how to analyse social media data to identify influential bloggers. Very interesting content as well as a great example of a wonderful educational technology resource. Take a look.
I am delighted with the short highlights video version of my presentation for the MLGSCA group in March in Cerritos California.. The complete talk will be put on the Health Sciences Libraries website fairly soon, but in the meantime, please enjoy these excerpts.
The talk focused on a vision of collaborative librarianship, based out of the history of the profession and extending through potential applications of new and social media.
The meeting was held in the astounding and very lovely Cerritos Public Library.
You might be thinking, “Lucky devil, I wish someone would fly me to Southern California!” I wasn’t quite that enthusiastic myself, at least to start out. You see, I sometimes get stuck in the mentality that goes with wearing a single-mom-special-needs-kid hat, and avoid traveling as a general rule of thumb. I’d done a few other invited speaker gigs this past year, and am feeling a bit like I’ve done enough traveling for a while. I wasn’t sure exactly why I was doing this. I also worked on the presentation harder than I’ve worked on any other presentation in at least a dozen years, and wondered why I was doing this to myself.
Through the actions of my very gracious and generous hosts all became clear. At the big meetings, everything tends to be pretty chaotic, lots of people milling around. It is hard to make those connections with individuals, to strike up a conversation and pick it up again later. There was a lot of that happening in this smaller meeting. Everyone was warm, friendly, helpful. The officers of MLGSCA went out of their ways to welcome me and make the experience comfortable and easy.
Michelle Kraft of the Krafty Librarian gave a wonderful keynote called “The Evolving Library.” She talked a lot about generational differences in patron communities, and focused very nitty gritty hands-on practical tips for engaging with your community successfully. Some of my favorites included matching giftcards to different community subsections as prizes in special events and promotions; having monthly auctions for a free parking space near the building; and chalkboard walls in the study rooms.
When I gave my own presentation the experience was purely delightful. People asked all the right questions, laughed in the right places. Afterwards, someone wanted to give me a hug she was so enthused; later a few other people kept using the word “inspirational”.
I hung out a bit afterwards and volunteered as a “technology sherpa”, a term which was new to me but seemed to mean someone willing to guide others. I showed off Slideshare a bit, and veered off into some of those rewarding tangential conversations. I’m unfortunately no good at remembering people’s names, but I felt like I made friends good enough that I really wanted to. My apologies to the guy who introduced my presentations at MLA. He really is one of the most charismatic and joyful people I’ve met in ages, and I wish I could remember his name.
Aside from the wonderful people, another high point was seeing (and *touching!) the ocean. Very first time in my life, and I was thrilled.
But really, the takeaway lesson for me was that the smaller meetings are really all about the people. Thank you, folks. You were great!
I heard about this video via Scoble in Twitter, and could not find it in his Friendfeed stream to comment. So, commenting here, and hoping a few folks will enjoy hearing about it.
Epocrates is an immensely popular and useful application in healthcare that has been around for ages.
It was one of the first widely adopted healthcare mobile applications when PDAs first became popular. The earliest mention of Epocrates for handheld or mobile devices was in 2002 in this article, with earlier related articles about its development in the previous year.
In my opinion, Epocrates contributed significantly to the adoption of mobile devices by healthcare professionals. The original Epocrates was basically a drug database, although this has since expanded to many other useful reference tools. The original free portion, what is now known as EpocratesRX, is is still free — “Free comprehensive handheld drug guide for Palm, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and BlackBerry.”
Well today’s news is not that Epocrates is now available for the iPhone — that was announced at the beginning of the month. At this point I tend to assume that Epocrates will always be available for whatever are popular mobile platforms. I shouldn’t, but, well, it’s Epocrates! It will always be there! And I am delighted to see it available on the iPhone, since our local hospital is having some (ahem) challenges making iPhones easy to use within the hospital. Hopefully this will drive a solution. (I’ve been working on a post about medical apps for the iPhone/iTouch, but am waiting to be able to actually use my iTouch at work!)
What caught my attention today is this new video from Robert Scoble in which a Stanford clinician enthusiastically demonstrates the usefulness of Epocrates on the iPhone. Now, I tried to put the embed code in here, but WordPress does trust many people, so I have the link here, and will put the full post with the embedded video back at the old blog location. Be forewarned, the video is over a half hour long.
Yesterday in Twitter, Susannah Fox from Pew was asking after health podcasts. I had most of this content over on the old Dentistry Library site, which is now gone, so I am going to instead bring some of it over here, and highlight new finds occasionally.
The range and variety of health podcasts is enormous. The many uses include audio blogs, pods by patients for patients, patient education from hospitals, general news service broadcasts and articles, and even into the realm of providing therapy and tools for concerns such as stress reduction.
