There was an online presentation and q&a period on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009, about the proposed redesign of the primary PubMed pages. This was scheduled to be released this summer but is not up at this time yet.

My overall impression is certainly an improvement. It's a much simpler, streamlined and current design, which should ease public use and enjoyment of the product, both of which are rather important. There were the usual questions about functionality, but, as the presenter David Gillikin, Chief of NLM’s Bibliographic Services, repeatedly pointed out, this is an upgrade of design only. Strict functionality will not be touched.

Krafty Librarian points out:

Since most of the "cool" or helpful things like Details, History, Citation Matcher are only available from the Advanced Search, many people may want to have a nice short cut straight to that area.

I would have to suggest that NLM considers adding random reminders if not fixed links to tools like this in with the boxes on the right "Related Articles", "Recent Activity", etc.

I love forward to the the release of the redesign. I can't wait to play around with it and explore. It certainly welcomes a bit of curiosity and playing more than the current interface. What do you think? Are you excited?

[ "PubMed Redesign 2009" presentation, 45 min, learned of from a Krafty Librarian blog entry ]

Labels: aboutHealth, aboutInformation, aboutLibrarianship, aboutOnlineTools, aboutTechnology, aboutWeb2.0, reviews

 

This is a rather atemporal story of a Jewish man grieving the death of his wife and son from the April 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. I say "rather atemporal" because there are a series of what seem to be flashbacks that possibly turn out to be actually time loops or some kind of spiritual (for lack of a better word) bifurcation and release. To make up your own mind, you'd better read it yourself. You can read it in one of his latest collections, Jubilee.

One of my problems with the story is that I am not Jewish and therefore didn't understand many of the terms used: kaddish, Shekhinah, tallit, phylacteries, Akeidah, Shema, etc. I could have looked them up while I was reading but that would have been a break in the reading every time. In the end, however, this was not a huge barrier to enjoying the story, although looking at the definitions now suggests that another level of appreciation would have been potentially possible.

In the end, despite a story of desperation, near insanity, and frightening hallucinations/miracles, the main character is no worse for wear. Perhaps the story is a description of the turmoil and confusion of grief. All in all, a worthwhile read given how atypically science-fiction-like it is.

Labels: aboutHumanNature, reviews, shortstories