Podcasting and Online Hosted Video

What is on You Tube?
Like the Internet itself, anything and everything!
During the past week, there have been several cases reported in the media of young people committing physical assaults for the purpose of posting the films on You Tube. There are also speeches by Noble laureates.

What is the value of the video content on You Tube?
Mixed!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth? We know that seeing things in action can really assist in learning. A You Tube video of someone tying a necktie, for example, could be really helpful to the single mother helping her son get ready for a formal occasion. In the medical world, demonstrations of CPR, examples of physical therapy exercies, and CEU lectures could be (and are currently) posted. For the medical library realm, online tutorials for database and catalog searching abound.

So what is the concern?
The issue of quality and authority remain. The You Tube screen doesn't contain fields for complete source information. Few of the videos posted, even those of higher quality, contain a title screen with adequate source information. Should the medical library world join the You Tube world of advertising, narcissistic amatuer content, misinformation, and the occasional high quality segment? I'm still struggling with this.

Photosharing Online

Sharing photos online, creating slideshows, and editing images was lots of fun and the personal applications are obvious. It takes deeper thinking to develop medical library applications, particularly in light of copyright concerns. I can see how a physical assessment class could make use of photos of various patients with diseases or disorders, but approval would be required by those photographed. If images located from other sources were used, there would be copyright issues. The ease of downloading images and making them widely available would require the library to develop clear copyright policies and guidelines specific to images and disseminate this information to faculty and students using photosharing tools in instuction.

Wikis

Wikis vs. Blogs

• Wikis are similar to an edited book in that each contributor can post original content and contribute fully. They are more collaborative and in areas like meeting planning would be extremely useful.
• Blogs are similar to authored books where the single author contributes the majority of content with only comments on the author's content provided by others. There might be a place in the medical library world for blogs but great care needs to be taken that the authority, objectivity, quality factors are considered. A healthcare provider (subject expert) could create a blog to provide information to paitents in a support group, for example. Diabetes education might work as a topic that could use a blog. Careful disclaimers must be developed.

Web Office Tools

Collaboration spaces and authoring tools on the Web have many positive applications in the medical library world: meeting and conference planning, curriculum development projects, and writing articles or research projects across institutions are just a few. Earlier this year, I worked on an article with three other faculty members, using our college's share drive. It was very cumbersome to keep track of the various edits and versions and group members had to e-mail others when changes were made.

Google Docs makes keeping track of versions very easy and you can set up an RSS feed and/or e-mail notification of any edits. Very slick! Zoho has a nifty tagging feature and provides a database tool in addition to the word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software available at Google Docs.

As with any Internet-based application, privacy and security are an issue. Although users can determine levels of access, I think we need to examine the FERPA and HIPAA implications. I would not use Internet-based applications for any material that contains personal identification information of individual patients or students.

The permanence of the tools is also an issue. Both Google Docs and Zoho are labeled as Beta, which means they will change. They could disappear or, more likely, morph into a service that requires payment for the advanced features users learn to like in the Beta version. "It's all about the money!" Because of that, I don't think Web office tools will replace institutional purchases of basic office software.

These tools do work very well for short term projects that do not contain sensitive information. They can facilitate collaboration and communication and have a role in medical library services and healthcare education.

Social Bookmarking

Using del.icio.us has been very interesting. There are many advantages to a Web based bookmarking tool:

• Portability. The bookmarks can be accessed from any computer.
• Personalization. They can be tagged with terms that are most useful to the user.

I can create collections of bookmarks for specific courses and tag them both by course and by topic. In addition, I can make them available to others. Faculty and students could then have access to a quality collection of Web resources. Having the "tag" function in the browser toolbar makes the process as easy as possible.

Developing a personal system of tags would take some thought but would also assure consistency. I was reminded of the library philosopher, Ranganathan's Colon Classification System as I found myself thinking about the "facets" of a specific resource and assigning multiple tags, each representing a specific facet or aspect, of a source. The "old school" library scheme can help guide the implementation of the "new school" Web 2.0 tool.