Popular social media sites have millions of registered users (Facebook, over 800 million; Twitter, over 500 million; WordPress, over 15 million), many of whom log in daily to share intimate details of their lives, including symptoms, illnesses and struggles with chronic diseases. This is a treasure trove of informal data available for research and monitoring of public health issues. While tapping this resource raises many ethical issues, particularly individual identification, initial research has demonstrated that it may help with disease surveillance.

St Louis and Zorlu offer the following examples:

• Recent analysis of three million tweets from May – December 2009 showed that “the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak could have been identified on Twitter one week before it emerged in official records from general practitioner reports”
• Physicians, unable to reach patients with chronic conditions after the tsunami in Japan in March 2011, turned to Twitter and the mobile Internet to direct patients to sources for their medications.
• Digital surveillance platforms such as BioCaster and HealthMap regularly search and extract information from news, social media and other sites looking for hints and clues of new public health threats.

While these examples are compelling, and collaborations between HealthMap and public health agencies are underway to track influenza and other public health challenges, Twitter cannot replace traditional methods of tracking and verifying diseases. How many times have you or someone you know attributed symptoms to one illness, only to find it was a different illness? Monitoring must be coupled with verification, else we risk spreading rumor and panic.

Do you use Twitter or other social media to talk about your health concerns and conditions? How do you feel about having this information monitored for the good of many? Tell us!

References:

St Louis, C., & Zorlu, G. (2012). Can Twitter predict disease outbreaks? BMJ, 344, e2353. doi: 10.1136/bmj.e2353

Szomszor, M., Kostkova, P., & De Quincey, E. (2012). Swineflu: Twitter predicts swine flu oubreak in 2009.

Tamura, Y., & Fukuda, K. (2011). Earthquake in Japan. Lancet, 377(9778), 1652. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(11)60672-7

The number of incidents, when compared to the total number of disciplinary actions taken by medical boards, is small, but can be expected to grow as more physicians embrace and use social media.

In contrast, at Ohio State University (OSU), instructors recognize that today’s learners rely more heavily on technology to gain knowledge for a future career. A pilot study showed how social media (in this case, Twitter and Facebook) can be used to “push” helpful information to students on a daily basis. More than half of the participants had not used Twitter previously, and upwards of 80% found it a useful and helpful addition to their course.

Any tool can and will be used and misused, social media included. What is important is to learn from our mistakes, and remain open to new and novel ways to benefit all.

Kroski’s page includes widgets to watch for times when her library is mentioned in/on:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• message boards
• Google alerts, and more.

To watch Facebook, the page’s user needs to be logged-in to Facebook first, which means this page cannot be shared as easily as this librarian would desire. Still, it’s a great idea, and kudos to her for sharing!

How do you watch for mentions of your library across various media and platforms? What does/not work for you? Tell us about it!

Can’t stay current with important information about your field?

Do you wish there was an easier way to keep on top of what’s happening?

Join us for ‘Keeping Current with Social Media’ on April 6th at 2pm in HSEB 3100B. Amy Honisett and Peter Jones from the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library will show you the basics of two great tools (RSS Feeds and Twitter) you can use to streamline your information overload. They will also briefly cover dashboards, which are services that collect your many social media accounts into one place.

Register online at: http://bit.ly/HpAfwi 

73 percent of users said they would not be OK with an online search engine keeping track of their queries even if the data provides personalized results in the future. And 68 percent said they were not OK with targeted advertising because they don’t want their online activities tracked and analyzed.

Google is the preferred search engine for most online searching, though people surveyed don’t want information about their searches tracked. Yet unless you take steps to make sure this information is not collected, Google tracks it. And its search algorithms that include this information are what provides users with  the results they like. In a sense, we want it both ways: quality search results and privacy protections.

This is an area ripe for research: if we could define and control what information search engines and other online service providers can collect, would end users’ satisfaction with search engines change?

What do you think? Tell us!

[Chisolm] “is one of a growing number of medical professionals who, despite the present-day climate of strict patient privacy regulations and oversight, see the benefits of using social media to supplement their work and interact with colleagues, patients and the general public.” She connects with others using her Twitter accounts @whole_patients in order to “demystify psychiatry and psychotherapy for patients and doctors,” and @psychpearls , “which is targeted to learners interested in ‘clinical pearls’ about psychiatry.”

She and a colleague, Tabor Flickinger, a clinical education fellow, are designing a curriculum to train students at the School of Medicine in the use, benefits and potential pitfalls of using social media in medicine. In December 2011 they received an Osler Center for Clinical Excellence small grant award to run a pilot study with medical students during their third year clerkship of 2012 – 2013.

The format of the pilot study will be a voluntary online addition to clinical activities during the eight-week Internal Medicine Clerkship. One group of students will participate in a blog where they can write about and discuss their clinical experiences. Another group will serve as a comparison cohort; they will be studied but will not participate in the blog (from the Hopkins Gazette article).

No doubt many forward-thinking medical institutions, such as the University of Utah, will be watching for the results of this study.

Are you using social media in your practice (medical, psychiatry, or whatever)? How helpful has it been? What have proven to be the pitfalls? Tell us about it!

Traditionally, libraries have offered tours to incoming groups, where new students and faculty hear about services offered, and take home a handful of printed materials listing everything their library can do to help them in their work. Unfortunately, most of this information is never looked at, and ends up in a “circular file” (i.e. the trash).

Since the invention and proliferation of social media — blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, Second Life etc. — libraries have new venues for outreach and promotion. One software-as-service online tool that might be considered here is the ability to create short animations on any subject, such as “What is interlibrary loan?”
GoAnimate.com: Interlibrary Loan 1 by Firesidelibrarian

In addition, special events of all kinds are used to attract “diverse diverse, underserved and expanded user populations” (Fabian, 2003) to library events and resources. At the University of Buffalo, Arts and Humanities librarians formed partnerships with cultural institutions and academic departments to reach out to new audiences in new ways: teaching assistant workshops, multi-media kiosks, book talks and library exhibits.

In each of the four outreach activities, the Team found that the efforts of partnership produced more effective and successful results. For the library exhibits, partnerships with area cultural institutions and academic departments helped to ensure not only stimulating content, but an expanded market for our offerings. Additionally, librarians found that embracing technology solutions for their exhibit space limitations not only engaged unexpected users, but also opened up new opportunities for applying emerging technologies to more traditional library services, for example, library instruction.

Eccles library faculty are looking at ways to use similar events to draw in patron groups. Watch for more information in coming weeks. And if you have an idea to share, tell us about it!

Reference:
Fabian, C. A., C. D’Aniello, et al. (2003). “Multiple Models for Library Outreach Initiatives.” The Reference Librarian 39(82): 39-55.

Amidst this glut of options, it is easy to get hung up on the technology itself. Keep in mind that you don’t have to try everything at once. First, sit down and decide what your information needs are. If you need:

• In-depth discussions on certain research topics, look at blogs and wikis
• Real-time sampling of what people are thinking and saying on a given topic, try Twitter.
• Inspiration from people thinking out-of-the-box, look at the Facebook pages of enthusiastic upstarts in your field.
• To track new research, use RSS feeds and Google Reader
• Help clarifying your information needs before you can hope to begin utilizing these tools, ask a librarian!

Eccles Library staff have been on the cutting edge of information tools for many years, and both new and seasoned librarians can help you clarify which ones best meet your needs, and get you started using them. Just ask!

What social media tools do you use in your research? Tell us about it!

UPDATE:

This online conference ends Friday morning, October 21, 2011. The last web presentations will be presented in the Auditorium in the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics, directly behind the Eccles Health Sciences Library:

• 8:45 – 9:45 a.m.: IT from Both Sides of the Executive Table
• 9:45 – 10:00 a.m.: Online Conference Closing

There are two additional time slots for presentations (6:30 – 7:20 a.m. and 7:30 – 8:20 a.m.) where suggestions are welcome. Just consult the online list of presentations and bring your ideas when you come.

Join us!

The Krafty Librarian recently asked some thoughtful questions about the value of social media to medical and academic librarians:

• Since it is apparent that social media is being used and it is here to stay for a while, what are the biggest issues you face personally and professionally?
• Do you worry about a lack of privacy?  As more and more companies are going on Facebook and Twitter what is your thought about following them?  Do you follow them? Why or why not?
• What is your library or institution doing on Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare? How is your library or institution engaging its users? How do you measure engagement?
• Does the increase of bots on Twitter and inactive Facebook followers concern you?

The Eccles Library is trying to engage its users via its Twitter feed, Facebook page and this blog. One hot topic among medical academic libraries is health literacy, which Wikipedia defines as “an individual’s ability to read, understand and use healthcare information to make decisions and follow instructions for treatment.” Twitter searches using “#healthliteracy” has proven to be informative in learning what that site’s users are reading and thinking about this topic, as noted in a previous post. And as I posted more tweets on this topic, our feed has gained a few more followers.

On our Facebook page, the topic that appears to have garnered the most comments and Likes was copyright issues. But measuring engagement has proven elusive. Having worked in business previously, the value of time spent on a particular project was described as a return on investment or ROI. The book Social Media ROI by Olivier Blanchard just arrived on my desk via Interlibrary Loan, and may offer some insights on how to apply this concept to libraries and their use of social media. Stay tuned…

Writers have argued whether or not we do, or should, have a right to be forgotten. Tessa Mayes of the Guardian says no because it “degrades the concept of rights” and discounts the relationship between the individual and the society. Google claims this violates the objectivity of the Internet. And what about racist, sexist or other degrading comments by people running for public office: should those eventually be forgotten?

Last year the European Union proposed a law that would let users “sue websites for invading their privacy and would have a right to be ‘forgotten’ online” (The Telegraph). Could one person sabotage another’s job hunt by setting up a fake profile and loading it with racist, homophobic and violent images and writing? Social Intelligence Corp claims tells us what they will or will not do with this information, but will they provide free reports similar to free credit reports that are required by law so we can check?

Libraries have long operated under the premise of honoring privacy as much as possible. When a book is returned to the library, that patron’s record is cleared, and no record kept of what was read. The American Library Association’s “Library Bill of Rights” includes statements and interpretations on privacy that lawmakers and regulating bodies such as the FTC would do well to consider.

Where do you come down on this issue? What is not being done that should be done?