Mashups & API: Last Week Assignments!

1. Pick a mashup… any mashup
The medical mashups reviewed in Allan Cho's article are good examples. I tried to find some more related to medical or health and ended up getting several dead links. Then I had to pick any mashup. I searched the programmableweb and found Adactio Elsewhere. I like it. The author put together a variety of personal information from across the web in one place via Ajax scripting and the APIs from Upcoming.org, Flickr, Amazon, and Del.icio.us. Under one roof, you can browse author's Flickr pictures, Amazon wish list, the newest links he tagged on Magnolia, his incoming events, and RSS feeds from his friends and colleagues. Cool!

2. What these bloggers said about privacy?
The search yielded 9570 results. On the first search results page (20 results), none of the librarian bloggers talked about "privacy" in their blog posts. Instead, the commercial sites about free credit reports and privacy protection software appeared three times on the page. Do I need to go to the next page? No. It was not worth browsing further more. This made me think why the search was not able to retrieve relevant results? This also motivated me to create a search roll using Rollyo-- I'm My Own Doctor: searching for health information from 20+ trusted Web sites I selected. I tested a few search on my newly created search roll, I'm satisfied with the results. However, I still can't find the answer to the question.

My Podcast

Just loaded one podcast on my library's site. Click here to listen.

Podcasting and Online Hosted Video

Podcasting has great potentials for library instruction and library resource promotion. Our library has been doing podcasting since 2007. They are less than 5-minute audio and video files that summarize the highlights of library workshops and orientations. Podcasts include information on health information resources, database search strategies, literature and resource guides, Internet safety tips, general orientation to the library, etc. Patrons can view the podcasts on their computers or download them to their iPods or MP3 players. RSS feed is enable for subscription by using the most popular feed readers (e.g, Google Reader, Live bookmark, My Yahoo, and Bloglines).
YouTube is another way for promoting library resources and library services.
Discover Information Literacy is one of the videos I like:

Online Photo Sharing

As more and more people use online photo sharing tools, they could be an effective way to promote library and library resources. Have a look at this library slide show in Flickr . I use Flickr to create two photo galleries. All the pictures that were tagged with Computer in Libraries 2008 and libraries from Flickr show in my blog.

Here are some of the libraries and library associations that have presences on Flickr:
ALA
Abilene Public Library
ACRL
Boston Public Library
Library of Congress
University of Vermont
UTHSC Library
Waukee Public Library
Yale Science Libraries

I believe there are much more out there.

Web Office Tools

Considering the fact that these tools facilitate collaboration and document sharing, they have great potential in the future. Google Doc is an excellent example. It integrates email, calendar, contacts, documents, PPT, and spreadsheets under one roof. However, security is always an issue. Make sure to back up documents somewhere else.

Steps to Create My NCBI Collection while Searching PubMed/Medline

On April 4, 2008, PubMed released adding Collections to the Send to drop-down menu . Users don't have to send their references to Clipboard before sending to Collections. This was a great improvement. You can search PubMed and add what you want to your Collections or create new Collection. This slideshow will demo the howto.

| View | Upload your own

JAMA Weekly Video

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) produces a weekly video report. I just learned how to embed it on the blog.