Keynote presentation for the Metro Detroit Medical Librarians Group, November 2015.

1. Pixelated image of red circuit board after
soldering.
"But is an
‘Emerging
Technologies
Informationist’
a Librarian?"
PF Anderson
MDMLG
November 19, 2015

2. Once upon a time …
• A historical anatomy text
including what was
innovative technology for
its time — overlays
showing the layers of the
body.

3. "When I began work for public
library interests in New York we
had 40 free public libraries and
40,000 saloons, so that by the law
of averages a boy leaving his
home in the evening would pass
999 open doors with a cordial
welcome to the worst influences
to every one inviting him to the
companionship and inspiration of
the best books.”
– Melvil Dewey, The Field and
Future of Traveling Libraries,
1901

4. What is a librarian?
Image of a
person
constructed of
books.
Image by Peacay: http://flickr.com/photos/85009674@N00/2658665834

5. What is a librarian?
• "But the modern library is
less a reservoir than a
fountain. Its librarian is an
active, aggressive factor in
popular education. He
recognizes fully his duty
to get and to keep, but
puts far above this his
greater duty to use."
– Melville Dewey. On
Libraries, 1904, p. 196

6. “Students walked hundreds of miles, perhaps begging
their way, to sit within sound of the voice of some
chosen teacher or to read some book securely chained
to a pillar. But the volume which then cost as much as
a village has by the new process become as cheap as
a lunch.”
– Melvil Dewey, 1901

7. What is a librarian?
Tommy sat down next to
Jonathan and reached for
the keyboard -- and Mary
Kay took it away from them
both. "This is my pidgin," she
said firmly, and they
relinquished it. (Mary Kay is
one of the secret masters
of the world: a librarian.
They control information.
Don't ever piss one off.)
Spider Robinson, The
Callahan Touch, p. 64.

8. What is a librarian?
Deb DeGeorge was a fellow libriomancer
& librarian, but whereas I worked for a
small public library, she held a position
with the Library of Congress in
Washington, DC. She had a pair of
Master's degrees, spoke & read five
languages & could spout obscenities in six
more, & worked as a self-described
"cataloger of weird shit."
Jim C. Hines, Libriomancer, p.31-32.

9. What is a librarian?
• Screenshot of librarians’ brief bios from
Twitter, including:
– Itinerant Poetry Librarian
– Daring Librarian
– Jaime (A librarian)
– Library of Congress
– Tiffany Whitehead
– Satan Librarian
– “The Librarians”
– Jessamyn West
– Joe Murphy

10. What is a
librarian?
• Lots more screenshots
of librarians’ brief bios
from Twitter.

11. • "A glance at the development of the library idea will
enable us better to predict its future, as the
astronomer computes an orbit, not by study of where a
body stands today, but of the track over which it has
just come."
– Melvil Dewey, 1901
The Helix Nebula from La Silla Observatory, Credit: WFI, MPG/ESO 2.2-m, Telescope La Silla Observatory, ESQ.

12. What do
librarians
do?
Image of Ook, the
Discworld Librarian
(and an orangutan)
from Terry Pratchett’s
Discworld series.
Image by Musgo_Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30976576@N07/2967919054/

13. What have librarians always done?

14. What do librarians do?
Librarians' duties vary,
but no matter the
task, the job comes
down to one priority:
Helping people.
- Jennifer Alyson, “Professional Duties
of a Librarian,” Houston Chronicle

15. What do librarians do?
Twitter:
#LibrariesTransform
Because the world
is at their
fingertips, and the
world can be a
scary place.
#LibrariesTransform

16. What do librarians do?
Image from Second Life
of an avatar who
modeled himself after
Melvil Dewey.
Melvil Dewey was a one-man Silicon
Valley born a century before
Steve Jobs. He was the
quintessential Industrial Age
entrepreneur, but unlike the
Carnegies and Rockefellers, with
their industries of heavy materiality
and heavy labor, Dewey sold ideas.
- Shannon Mattern, “Library as
Infrastructure” Places Journal

17. What have librarians always done?

18. • discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• husband
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
What have librarians always done?

19. Objects of Our Attention
Image of old library sorting cards
giving years from 1930 to 1980

20. "Just tell me how you learned to hear that corn."
And he'd say, "It takes a lot of practice. You can't be in a hurry."
And I'd say, "I have time." …
And so he said, "Do this: go get to know one thing as well as you can.
It should be something small. Don't start with a mountain. Don't start
with the whole Pacific Ocean."
Byrd Baylor & Peter Parnall, The Other Way to Listen. NY:
Scribner, 1978

21. Objects of Our Attention
• Images of items collected
in early 20th century
libraries, such as books
and journals, microfilm,
microfiche, and lantern
slides.

22. Objects of Our Attention
• Images of items typical in
libraries in the mid to late 20th
century, including Index Medicus
…

23. Objects of Our Attention
• Images of items collected in
libraries from the late 80s
onward.
after

24. "The reason I’m spending so much time on literacy, I
think, is because I am trying to wrap my head around this
paradox: libraries are among the institutions striving to
undo some of the inequity in our world, and yet, the
principal action we take is to privilege a mode of
communication used primarily by the elite."
– Caleb. “A Paradox in Librarianship.” February 28, 2009 – 9:18
pm.command-f - a collaborating library thing <http://command-f.
info/caleb/a-paradox-in-librarianship>

25. A Month in the Life
of an ETechLib

26. Gapingvoid:
Inspire, Be
Inspired
My Job
Description
from Gapingvoid: http://www.gapingvoid.com/

27. Screenshot of the
Google Plus site for
the MLA Emerging
Technologies Team
MLA Systematic Review Team #6

28. • discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
• Tech & Support
– Methodology formation
– Leadership (hah!)
– Team building
– Google Plus, Google Hangouts, Google Drive, Bluejeans,
Skype
– Domain competencies (healthcare & technology)
• Communities
– Peers
MLA Systematic Review Team #6

29. Livetweet & Storify
» Sports Concussion Summit
https://storify.
com/pfanderson/sport-
concussion-summit/preview
» Microbiome Symposium https:
//storify.
com/pfanderson/microbiome-
symposium/
» UofM's Health Professions
Education Day #HPEDay https:
//storify.com/pfanderson/hpeday
» What It Means To Be Multiracial
in a Monoracial World https:
//storify.com/pfanderson/what-it-
means-to-be-multiracial-in-a-
monoracial-wo

30. Livetweet & Storify
» First Generation Student Life at
the University of Michigan https:
//storify.com/pfanderson/first-
generation-student-life-at-the-
university-of
» James T. Neubacher Award
Ceremony (with Eric Hipple)
https://storify.
com/pfanderson/james-t-
neubacher-award-ceremony-
with-eric-hipple
» Stigma in Muslim-American
Mental Health https://storify.
com/pfanderson/stigma-in-
muslim-american-mental-health
» Language, Stereotypes, &
Discrimination https://storify.
com/pfanderson/language-
stereotypes-bullying

31. • discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
• Tech & Support
– Social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr,
Youtube
– Rapid Web/Pubmed/Google Scholar
searching (like a clinical librarian on rounds)
– Image searching
– Open PDF discovery
– Rapid real time editing, short term memory
– Content competencies
• Communities
– Healthcare consumers
– Healthcare professionals
– General public
– Campus community
– Departmental partnerships
Livetweet & Storify

32. Tag Ontology
• Screenshot of the Symplur page for the
Cancer Tag Ontology. Original here: http:
//www.symplur.com/healthcare-
hashtags/ontology/

33. Tag Ontology
• Screenshot of an analysis of the utilization of
the Cancer Tag Ontology. Original here: http:
//www.slideshare.net/subatomicdoc/disease-
specific-hashtags-for-communication-about-
cancer-care-48866106

34. Tag Ontology
• Screenshot: from Facebook
of article announcement and
attribution. Second image is
a screenshot os the same
from the journal site.
3rd image is out Reuters news
report about teh project,
profiled in “Healthy Living”
http://healthylivingmagazine.
us/Articles/14671/

35. Tag Ontology
• discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• husband
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
• Context, structure, conceptualization
• Metadata impacts
• Blogging, tweeting, promotion, outreach, team building,
support, research
• Collaborate with team, including archive & analysis
• Mentoring & best practices development

36. MakeHealth

37. MakeHealth
• discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• husband
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
• Tech & Support
– Research competition
– Blog, tweet,
troubleshoot, plan,
collaboration tools
• Communities
– Healthcare
consumers
– Healthcare advocates
– Researchers (grant
team)
– Makers, geeks,
hackers, inventors …

38. “Stan Lee” & the
“Leopardskin Librarian”
Screenshots of certificates for
the MOOC: “Rise of
Superheroes and Their
Impact on Pop Culture”

39. “Stan Lee” & the
“Leopardskin
Librarian”
One sample page from the
Leopardskin Librarian
webcomic (http:
//leopardskinlibrarian.
wordpress.com/). Frame
one shows a homeless
woman: “The shelters, they
talk to the police. He’d find
me. Trust me on this.
Before we married, I was a
social worker. The HMIS is
a knife that cuts both ways.”
Frame 2 shows a librarian:
“Really? But it’s February!
You can’t sleep outside!”
HMIS stands for Homeless
Management Information
System.
Did you know the federal
Homeless Management
Information System (HMIS) is
not required to follow HIPAA
regulations for privacy of
health information?
I didn’t either.

40. “Stan Lee” & the
“Leopardskin Librarian”
• discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• husband
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
• Tech & Support
– Mobile apps & web apps to
make comics-making
sustainable
– Suggest Graphic Medicine
titles for collection, libguide
– Event on comics & disability
• Communities
– Campus comics interest
groups
– Hospital & HR

41. 3D Printing Workshop in
Second Life
Screenshot of a workshop
presentation on 3d printing given at
Virtual Ability Island in Second Life
(a 3d virtual world). On the screen is
shown a network map of 3d printing
MeSH terms in MEDLINE.

42. 3D Printing Workshop in Second
Life
• discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
• Tech & Support
– Topic competency; presentation tech
competencies
• Communities
– Persons with disabilities & the homebound
(international)

43. Wearables & Self-Tracking
Screenshot of Genes for
Good Ancestry data
Screenshot of
23andMe Ancestry
data

44. Wearables & Self-Tracking
Screenshot from mobile
device of an app collection
for self-tracking. Examples
shown include icons for
AddApp, Misfit, Withings,
Pebble, Track & Share
Lite, Level, Yoga, Fitness
Buddy, Pillow.
Screenshot from
AddApp set up
screen showing
the various types
of data it can track
and integrate
across devices
and apps: heart,
steps, sleep, runs,
meds, geolocation,
diet, bicycling.

45. Wearables & Self-Tracking
Screenshots of sleep tracker reports.

46. Wearables & Self-Tracking
• discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
• Tech & Support
– Testing apps; purchasing devices;
collaboration
• Communities
– Local community; Campus community;
Faculty support & engagement;

47. Social Media in PubMed
• <http://tinyurl.com/am93sq>
• ("second life" AND (virtual OR 3d OR immersive)) OR
"virtual worlds" OR "web 3.0" OR "medicine 2.0" OR
"health 2.0" OR "web 2.0" OR mashup OR "social
media" OR digg OR "del.icio.us" OR "social
bookmarking" OR wikis OR folksonomy OR wikipedia
OR flickr OR twitter OR youtube OR facebook OR
myspace

48. 1. Online Curves: A Quality Analysis of Scoliosis Videos on YouTube.
2. 660: USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO INCREASE THE REACH OF SCCM'S CRITICAL CARE CONGRESS.
3. YouTube Video as Health Literacy Tool: A Test of Body Image Campaign Effectiveness.
4. Identifying the most important outcomes for systematic reviews of interventions for rhinosinusitis in adults: working
with Patients, Public and Practitioners.
5. Using ontologies to model human navigation behavior in information networks: A study based on Wikipedia.
6. Situations in 140 Characters: Assessing Real-World Situations on Twitter.
7. Preconception-related needs of reproductive-aged women.
8. Pro-Anorexia and Anti-Pro-Anorexia Videos on YouTube: Sentiment Analysis of User Responses.
9. CVTree3 Web Server for Whole-genome-based and Alignment-free Prokaryotic Phylogeny and Taxonomy.
10. Social media could provide early warning of virus outbreaks.
11. Follow up: Who is watching whom? ONA offers social media guidelines to protect nurses, others.
12. Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse and Social Network Patterns on Social Media: Associations With Alcohol Use
and Problems Among Young Adult Women.
13. Smoking Cessation Intervention on Facebook: Which Content Generates the Best Engagement?
14. Quantifying and Mapping Global Data Poverty.
15. SynFind: compiling syntenic regions across any set of genomes on demand.
16. Emergent health risks and audience information engagement on social media.
17. "Get drunk. Smoke weed. Have fun.": A Content Analysis of Tweets About Marijuana and Alcohol.
18. Coupled catastrophes: sudden shifts cascade and hop among interdependent systems.
19. Public Attitudes to Housing Systems for Pregnant Pigs.
20. Exploring mobile health in a private online social network.

49. Social Media in PubMed
(2009)
• n = 426 total
• 2008 = 161
• 2007 = 80 (>14 not relevant)
• 2006 = 37 (>16 not relevant)
• 2005 = 26 (8 relevant)

50. Social Media in PubMed (2015)
• n = 6435 total
• 2015 = 1573
• 2014 = 1558
• 2013 = 1264
• 2012 = 915
• 2011 = 627
• 2010 = 371
• 2009 = 232
• 2008 = 167
• 2007 = 95
• 2006 = 40
• 2005 = 25

51. Social
Media in
PubMed
(2009)
• n = 426
• Largest concepts:
– Web 2.0
– Virtual worlds
– Wikis/Wikipedia
– Myspace
– Youtube

52. Social
Media in
PubMed
(2015)
• n = 6892
• Largest concepts:
– Social Media
– Social Networking
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Youtube

53. Social
Media in
PubMed
(2015)
• n = 6892
• Largest concepts:
– Social Media
– Social Networking
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Youtube
•

54. community

55. consumers
special needs
advocates

56. teaching
learning

57. clinicians
allied health

58. researchers
life science
clinical
informatics
translational
Image by BWJones: http://flickr.com/photos/bwjones/3315105563/

59. health management

60. peers

61. • "One of the responsibilities of information
professionals in the digital age is to point
researchers to papers or interesting blogposts
about emerging topics."
– Dean Giustini. 'Open Science' & 'Research 2.0' in
Scholarship. Posted on February 27, 2009 - 18:59
Open Medicine Blog.

62. How Do You Serve?

63. Social NOT-Working
WHY NOT
anonymity fear of reprisal
marketing control IP/brand
personal gain don't see value
social search/efficiency don't have time
don't have tech
transparency/trust HIPAA; contracts; scooping
isolation > belonging isolation > don't know
brainstorming independence
emotional support privacy
altruism
collaboration
conversation

64. Social Media Risks:
Intellectual Property / Privacy
• Screenshot of a delicious collection
including an image that is blocked in
Flickr.

65. Strategy: Sorry
• Accept that some
content will be stolen.
• Create your content with
your brand embedded
throughout.
• The best defense is a
strong offense
• But no real answer at
this time

66. Social Media Risks:
Looking Silly

67. Strategy:
Use Common Sense
• Tweet: Early Show rules for tweeting:
Treat it like e-mail -- you can’t take it
back. Don’t tweet when you’re angry or
drunk.

68. Social Media Risks:
Spam & Griefers & Bots (Oh, My)
• “ever since @haikutwaiku started
aggregating twaiku without giving credit
to the authors, I’ve been turned off
posting twaiku here” @moritherapy, Jan
8, 2009

69. Strategy:
Open/Closed Balance
• Don’t follow everyone
• Especially don’t AUTOFOLLOW
• Check out the people you do
follow
• Don’t be afraid to file a
griefing or spam report
• Enlist support of others with
same problem

70. Social Media Risks: Quality
‘If not by Scriptures, how can we be sure,’
Replied the Panther, ‘what tradition’s pure?
For you may palm upon us new for old:
All, as they say, that glitters, is not gold.’
John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), lines 212-215.

71. Strategy:
Well, duh!
• Come on - we’re
librarians!!
– Grain of salt
– Consider the source
– Who watches the
watchers

72. Social Media Risks:
Magpie Moments
Social Media Risks:
Magpie Moments
• “But it GLITTERS!!” the magpie
replies. “Ooooh, shiny, shineeeee!”
– PF Anderson, 2009.

73. Strategy: Blink Think
Also called “Thin
Slicing”
Cast your virtual net
widely”, skim, see
what sticks or jumps
out at you
Don’t worry about
what you miss -
someone else will find
it and tell you about it

74. Social Media Risks:
Speed & Stress We typically regard our snap
judgment as best on immediate trivial
questions. Is that person attractive?
Do I want that candy bar? But
Dijksterhuis is suggesting the
opposite: that maybe that big
computer in our brain that handles
out unconscious is at its best when
it has to juggle many competing
variables.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Afterword. Blink. NY:
Back Bay Books, 2005, p. 267.

75. Strategy: Time Limits

76. Dunbar’s
Number -
NOT!
• Hutchinson Carpenter, I’m Not
Actually a Geek: http://bhc3.
wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-
serendipity-of-attention/

77. Science 2.0: Scooped
• Example tweets with opposing views about
being “scooped”: 1) https://twitter.
com/mdshawkey/status/64962077636729651
3 2) https://twitter.
com/ChrisFiloG/status/651863285784928256

78. Trends: Economics
• “In evolution, you don’t find innovative
mutation occurring at the warm core of
the herd—it’s the organisms at the
brink of starvation that change. In
microbial populations like cyanobacteria,
the organisms literally switch modes
from storing fat to just mutating like
crazy if all else fails. They literally up
their mutation rate when they’re
deprived of all essential nutrients.”
– Steve Jurvetson on nature’s nanotechnology:
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2977

79. Let’s put it all together
Image by bwjones: http://flickr.com/photos/bwjones/248388437/

80. content

81. content
conversation

82. conversation
connection

83. connection
convergence

84. convergence
confluence

85. confluence
influence

86. influence
intent

87. intent
content

88. Collaborative Librarianship
• content
• conversation
• connection
• convergence
• confluence
• influence
• intent
• content
• discover
• select
• collect
• organize
• husband
• access
• preserve
• assist
• share
• teach
• outreach
• research
• advocacy
• create
{
}

89. • "The cheapness
and quickness of
modern methods of
communication has
been like a growth
of wings, so that a
thousand things
which were thought
to belong like trees
in one place may
travel about like
birds.”
– Dewey, 1901
Image by 1sock: http://flickr.com/photos/1sock/339095161/

90. The One Slide Project /
EngageWithGrace.org
Can you and your loved ones answer
these questions?
1. On a scale of 1 to 5, would you rather die in your own bed with no intervention (1) or try any proven
or unproven intervention possible to preserve your life (5)?
2. If there were a choice, would you rather die at home or in a hospital?
3. Could a loved one correctly describe how you’d like to be treated in the case of a terminal illness?
4. Is there someone you trust that you’ve appointed to advocate on your behalf when the time is
near?
5. Have you completed any of the following: written a living will, appointed a healthcare power of
attorney, or completed an advanced directive?

91. Contact
PF Anderson
HSL/UM, 1135 E Catherine Ave, Ann
Arbor, MI 48109-2038
http://friendfeed.com/pfanderson

92. “Bio”
Patricia F. Anderson is the Emerging Technologies Informationist for the
University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences Library at the
University of Michigan.
Some of the stranger things she does in her job include:
» to work and teach in Second Life,
» tweet up a fury as @pfanderson,
» support health comic design initiatives,
» write, present, & publish on personal genomics and quantified self
and online sex ed,
» and more.

93. Credits
• All images by RosefireRising or PF Anderson unless
other attribution is provided.
• Dewey (1901) quotations from:
– Dewey, Melvil. Field and Future of Traveling Libraries. Published by
University of the State of New York, 1901. Original from Harvard University.
Digitized Apr 5, 2006. <http://books.google.com/books?id=y9tRt3MaMZ8C>
• Dewey (1904) quotations from:
– Dewey, Melvil. On Libraries: For Librarians. Published by Dodd, Mead & co.,
1904. Original from the University of Michigan. Digitized Oct 2, 2006.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=8HMZAAAAMAAJ>

94. • Thank you very
much

95. See
you
next
time!
PF Anderson
Emerging Technologies Librarian, UM
pfa@umich.edu | http://about.me/pfanderson