Task Force on Social Networking Software

Today I learned about Sermo a social networking site for physicians. The website claims:

Here, physicians aggregate observations from their daily practice and then - rapidly and in large numbers - challenge or corroborate each others opinions, accelerating the emergence of trends and new insights on medications, devices and treatments. You can then apply the collective knowledge to achieve better outcomes for your patients.

It’s nice to see professional social networking sites that will advance the practice of medicine.  I think we all recognize the potential of facebook, but in the end medical librarians are going to need better tools.  I know that a lot of this type interaction occurs on Medlib-l, but could medical librarians benifit from similar social networking?

Bart

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a couple of articles following the status of a book that is being peer-reviewed in the traditional sense and in addition is also being “reviewed” via blog.  Part 1 of the Chronicle article describes the motivation and process for the blog-based review, and Part 2 collections reactions from those that read the article.

Have a look at the site where the first chapter of the book is being commented on at http://grandtextauto.org/2008/01/22/expressive-processing-an-experiment-in-blog-based-peer-review/  and then follow future chapters at posts that begin with EP.  One can see that the comments that have been left so far are quite different than a traditional peer review.  A peer review generally summarizes the piece being reviewed and points out a few things that the writer should reconsider, change, or add to.  The comments on this blog are very specific, down to the paragraph level.  The comments are not anonymous, though they could be.

This process advances the idea of openness in peer review and creates a collegiality that encourages conversation about aspects of the book.  There’s a give and take, a grass-roots mood that is common on blogs, that may actually produce a better product in the end.  I’ll stay tuned to this and post updates when the author finishes the peer- and blog-review process to see which produces better quality, the wisdom-of-the-crowds approach or the few-experts approach.

In the meantime, what are your thoughts?  Does peer review get muddied by including non experts, or should peer review be opened up to include anyone who wants a say?

Scientific American is running what they are calling “an experiment in networked journalism”.  An author has written an article about how researchers are beginning to use Web 2.0 technologies in their work.  He has posted a draft of his article and is soliciting feedback.  The feedback he receives will influence the article’s content and maybe even its point of view.  Additionally the author has posed questions he’d like feedback on.  He posted his article on Jan 9 and already today, Jan 23, he has received 89 comments.

 I’m not sure how long this has been around but I discovered today that the Library of Congress has a flickr site.  How cool!

Offering historical photograph collections through Flickr gives the Library of Congress a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images with a new visual community.

We invite you to tag and comment on the photos, and we also welcome identifying information—many of these old photos came to us with scanty descriptions!

Read more at http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot.html.

The January 10th MLA-Focus announced the Webcast, “Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices: Discovering the Participatory Web,” to be held Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 1:00 p.m. No word on speakers or topics yet, but it sounds exciting.

Find more information about the program’s goals, objectives, and online registration at http://www.mlanet.org/education/distance_ed/
web2.0/index.html?focus_20070110.