What? There’s a whooping cough epidemic in Washington?

Yes, there is.

Now can someone explain to me why Wisconsin, which has almost 2,000 diagnosed cases as of May 8th to our 1,284 as of May 5th (new number at this same link every Tuesday afternoon), has not declared a state epidemic nor is getting anywhere near the current national coverage as Washington is?

What do I need to know about pertussis in Washington?

The Public Health – Seattle & King County website has a great section about pertussis. Scroll all the way down for King County (which Seattle is in) specific epidemiology information.

The Washington Department of Health  updates this report http://www.doh.wa.gov/cfh/Immunize/documents/pertupdate.pdf with statistics every Tuesday afternoon. This report is also linked from the above King County link in the upper right hand corner.

Why haven’t I heard about this before social media and listserv posts on Monday the 14th?

I’ve tried. Repeatedly. Things really did escalate recently (see May 10th Seattle Times article) and I’ve contacted many people directly since then in addition to using the hashtag tweet. I’m just one person though.

For perspective and comparison, when American Library Association held its joint meeting with the Canadian Library Association in Toronto during the SARS outbreak in 2003 they released a FAQ dated May 2nd and the conference was being held June 19-25. Please note the severity of the situation (the World Health Organization is not involved here in Seattle) and the length of time they had to plan. There are no travel bans to Seattle.

What do I do now?

You’re a medical librarian or student interested in the health information field, right?

Right. Then you already know the importance of going to authoritative sources of health information such as CDC, speaking with your own healthcare provider about you and/or your family’s current immunization status and health situation(s), and staying calm while eating bacon while not contributing to panic, misinformation or a negative hype cycle. Major props to those who are staying focused on the facts.

But MLA is less than two weeks away and my best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard that Tdap doesn’t work by then…

Repeat the above  in What do I do now? Props if you get the movie quote without Googling.

The ‘two weeks’ timeframe is mentioned specifically for the time between receiving a Tdap vaccination and coming in close contact with infants per CDC. The CDC advice for travelers tab about pertussis has

Travelers should be up-to-date with recommended pertussis vaccinations before departure.

Not two weeks before departure. No excuses. Talk with your healthcare provider about your health information. Is that not what our profession encourages people to do every day?

I talked with my healthcare provider, who recommends Tdap for me now, but I have no time to get it before MLA

No problem! Were you planning on going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? How about EMP or the Space Needle? Stop by the pharmacy at the nicely remodeled QFC (part of the Kroger chain) nearby at 501 Mercer Street (5th & Mercer) for your Tdap in addition to a snack (check Yelp reviews).  The store is open 24 hours a day, but the pharmacy hours are M – F 9:00 am – 9:00 pm, Sat 9:00 am – 6:00 pm and Sun 10:00 am – 6:00 pm.

There’s all I need! Ok, just kidding. Maybe.

Want to help support MLA scholarships? Order your own shot glass or other gear from the completely unsanctioned Drinking SIG (Special Interest Group – I will not admit how long as a newbie in 2008 I faked understanding what SIG meant) now!

The MLA 2012 jerseys will be available for sale at the MLA booth in the exhibit hall.

Want to know where to use Drinking SIG gear?

I wouldn’t be a true eagle without supporting the SCC (South Central Chapter of the Medical Library Association) Armadillo Ball! On May 21st (Monday) in Willow Rooms A & B (2nd floor) at the Seattle Sheraton Hotel from 8pm-12 midnight for just $10 at the door you get an adorable armadillo pin and inside one of the best parties, complete with an encore performance by the Bearded Pigs. You can probably use the shotglass at the Pigs’ main performance May 20th (Sunday) from 8pm-11pm in Grand Ballroom C too.

Sorry but 2012 will not include me turning a year older at midnight during the Armadillo Ball. Being on the home team means I have to run like Cinderella to get some sleep back at the homestead before the next day starts up again downtown at 7am. To celebrate my birthday this year, I will be stuffing your conference bags with a great team in a race against a 4pm deadline when the Registration desk opens!

That was the first time I gave a Google-docs-via-iPad-with-Kensington-keyboard note-taking strategy a try and I wasn’t all that impressed. I’m a relatively fast typist and there was a strange lag resulting in missing letters numerous times. Google Docs then crashed outright several times, wiping out a line or so of notes with each fall. Other experiments since February haven’t been all that much better, so while I’ll probably iPad most of the MLA meeting here in Seattle I’ll go old school and haul in my heavy old laptop from home when I’m Twitter Jockey for the Top Tech Trends session because I’ll stand a fighting chance at being able to keep up. Let us keep our fingers crossed for steady wireless connectivity!

When I learned she was also planning on featuring Krafty at the same time, I freaked out since Michelle is not only known by everyone already but she started blogging for medical librarians before I even had librarianship on my radar. To be referred to as a ‘medical librarian mainstay’ by MLA News editor Laurie Thompson is quite humbling.

So, beyond the gracious introduction Kelly has already given you about me in the column, I figured a few additional bits of information might be helpful too.

Who are you and what on earth is an Eagle Dawg?

If you want the full scoop my About section has me in various forms. The short story about the name is that it is the combination of the mascots of the University of North Texas and the University of Washington.  The context is over in this entry, and the portraits on the wall of my site (please tell me the word ‘Boobie’ has not appeared in MLA ink until now) are based on those statues. My office view is not even close to realistic, the ever-present coffee from our BUNN is though.

What continuing education course assignment started all this?

Believe it or not, the 2008 Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools course from MLA. My first post explained that on March 11, 2008. I’m sorry to say the index page for the course works but the rest of the content doesn’t appear to anymore. It’s too bad because my recollection is that it’s a great snapshot documenting how we were approaching learning and using those tools at the time. If you want a good laugh, you’re welcome to see my assignment posts ranging from one of my favorite commercials of all time to strange interactions with a National Library of Medicine mug.

What’s your MBL/NLM Biomedical Informatics coverage?

Here it is! I still refer to my blog coverage instead of the Powerpoint copies sometimes even though the course was 3 years ago and the curriculum has apparently changed a lot.

 Why don’t you blog all that often now?

Part of it has to do with the fact that I was working part time when I was researching and blogging in depth about things through fall 2009. I really miss being able to do that. However, my work day currently starts at 7:15 each morning as I telecommute for an hour before our son gets on the school bus, put in office hours the rest of the time, then race off to an increasing number of activities each night (right now way too much soggy Little League). My husband also is both a full time supervisor and student, and it’s my turn to shoulder more of running the family as he did while I was finishing my degrees.

I will never blog here on taxpayer time. For work I blog over here (want to learn more about MedlinePlus Connect?) and for my LAC co-chair duties over here. That said, I am going to make a renewed effort to write at least one quality post a week here again. There are so many entry fragments I want to finish and share.

Other questions? Let me know and thanks for checking things out!

@eagledawg Yes, if you preface questions with a “Q:” that would be a great help.

— Debra Cavanaugh (@debracav) April 17, 2012

On Wednesday April 18th the Medical Library Association is hosting a webcast, Leveraging Mobile Technologies for Health Sciences Libraries, that is 1) On Wednesday again (yay!) 2) Brings back the live studio panel of presenters (yay!) and 3) Has an established hashtag ahead of time (woohoo!)

Everyone already knows what the hashtag is because it’s clearly listed on the webcast website, right?

Well… no.

The hashtag #mlamobiletech is within the guide that is sent to site coordinators, specifically to be used as a way to send in questions during the webcast time to MLA in addition to email.

Establishing a hashtag ahead of time for the MLA webcast is a very welcome step in the right direction. However, it will requires a lot of effort for MLA staff to filter questions from our natural social communication channel discussion of the webcast content, resources, and thoughts that are being shared both during and after the webcast.

Perhaps Bright Ideas:

• Should we preface our #mlamobiletech webcast tweets with a Q: to make it easier for MLA staff to identify and convey our questions?
• Will MLA staff relay #mlamobiletech questions to the presenters to answer verbally, or will they be tweeting answers too?
• If the latter, could they preface an answer with an A: so it’s clear?

We have come a long way since last fall’s MLA Webcast: Change and WTH? and I want to acknowledge that but still see opportunity for improvement. What do you think?

Side note: If it hasn’t been abundantly clear already due to my abysmal lack of posts this year, literally all of my professional brainpower is being used up between the job that pays me and helping to coordinate an incredible local assistance committee to bring you the best experience possible at MLA 12 in Seattle.  I decompress every night by indexing the 1940 census (my goal is 1,000 names by April 30th) instead of thinking more about medical librarianship or I’d never sleep. Trust me, this is just a temporary phase.

News also hit yesterday about Seattle-based J&D Foods launching a bacon… coffin.

To complete the bacon trifecta consider that somewhere between marriage and death comes the pitter-patter of little feet, and something about a new addition to the family leads parents to want the best for their offspring – preferably organic.

That’s right.

Be sure not to miss where you can look for your own Fresh Step® Organic Bacon Litter.

I’ll have to check if I have anything I consider important in Google Wave to export but in revisiting Manhunt: Google Wave for Community (Emergency?) Communication in November 2009 I’m struck by what a difference in time that was when Twitter and Facebook usage was not nearly so prevalent in society. Today Twitter turns six! I’ve been usurping Twitter hashtags since 2009 but who could have envisioned their power with the Egyptian revolution last year?

Enter Google Analytics’ introduction of social media reports within their tools as announced today-

We wanted to help you with 3 things:

•     Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
•     Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
•     Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs

The bullet points are pretty full of marketing jargon, but I think all of us in the information field can see the value of all of them: we want people to turn to us and our resources (‘conversions’ means the transition from casual to intentional browsing), we want to actually engage with our users via our communication channels, and we want to show that we’re actually engaging with them instead of flinging up a Facebook page and Twitter account like all the other libraries are.

The first step is defining goals, as explained in an overview, in categories including URL destination (the last page of a multipage tutorial on a library website for example), time spent on the site, pages per visit and events (more complicated).

I am behind in my exploration of Google Analytics tools but this one has me particularly excited about potential and I’ll be poking around with it when I’m not having our son change his muddy baseball uniform into one for  Scouts while in a mad dash for time without mooning everyone from the car a bit more free and report back.

Heads up that there is a great opportunity on Wednesday, February 22nd beginning at 1pm Mountain time (what time is that for me?) at the Eccles Health Sciences Library Priscilla Mayden Lecture to hear about eScience and the Evolution of Library Services presented by Bart Ragon with questions welcomed from the audience via Twitter hashtag #Mayden2012. The direct live webcast link is http://ecclesvideo.med.utah.edu:83/mayden.wmv

If I had my act together I would have promoted this much earlier than now. There is no mention on the website if the session is being recorded for later viewing but I hope it is and will update this with the link if so!

This is particularly of interest with the recent launch of the Journal of eScience Librarianship which I blogged about for work. Speaking of, work and state/regional/national professional committee/officer/task force/miscellaneous hoo-ha positions continue to be so hectic that I’m still not blogging over here as much as I’d like to because I would rather throw my laptop through the window than have more screentime have no brain left at the end of each day, although I’ll work on trying to turn that around.

A good blog summary of what appeared to happen today can be found at What’s happening at Harvard? by Feral Librarian.

I completely empathize. We’ve been through very ugly times at the University of Washington Libraries and town hall meetings are part of how information about repeated State budget cuts has been shared with staff since 2009. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed or will enjoy future sessions but I always appreciate them. These are not pleasant financial times we are living in yet at each session we always had as clear of an idea of what cuts were going to be from staff positions and what reorganizations and library closures were going to happen as our Dean had at the time.

We never had what appears to be a truly phenomenal amount of staff uncertainty about their jobs or what will happen next as a result of one day of town hall meetings about a reorganization process that, according to Harvard Libraries’ own documentation, has been going on since 2009 and is supposed to be 90% complete right now. Friday morning edit – a reflective entry by a Harvard librarian who was there acknowledges both the gut tweet reaction (very normal) and still reflects the uncertainty about jobs and what’s happening next.

At one point today this reorganization information was easily accessible and linked off the Harvard Libraries Transition Website. Since the proverbial stuff has hit the fan, the easily accessible links off the website have disappeared but (as of 8pm Pacific time Thursday) some links for more context have not and there are screenshots and links below.

Edit: As of 3am Pacific time Friday (don’t ask), the link to Change Management and Career Development is back to being public information and appears to have additional workshop sessions for February, but the FAQ is not back to public information.

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic991404.files/HL%20Timeline_09_28_11.pdf

and

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic991404.files/HL%20Organizational%20Design_09_28_11.pdf

As After Furor, Harvard Library Spokesperson Says ‘Inaccurate’ That All Staff Have To Apply notes, other information that was previously public on the Harvard transition website today is now staff-only including FAQ and Change Management and Career Development, the latter showed mostly already full sessions for staff about CV development and identifying strengths.

If people are supposed to be the most valuable asset in an organization, the communication process to ‘share information that will assist Library staff with the change‘ did not reflect that at all today. It is always the responsibility of an organization’s leadership to clearly communicate exactly what change is happening in the first place. If that didn’t happen, how are the staff possibly being assisted?

So has Google (sort of)

I, too, stand against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) (quick infographic of why) although I’m not certain I’ve installed the plugin correctly here to indicate that.

By the way, do not even get me started on the Research Works Act (RWA) or I won’t stop. 2012 is turning out to be the Era of Evil Congressional Acronyms as far as I’m concerned.