My first co-authored literature review is out! My support of it and other projects wouldn’t have been possible without the teaching and support that #medlibs members past and present provide, and I’m continually grateful for our community’s generosity www.frontiersin.org/journals/onc...

Human in the loop 👻

Literally packed my laptop, walked out the door and made it half way to the subway station before I realized it was Sunday and not Monday. Gonna go home now lol

Australia recorded ZERO cases of cervical cancer in women under 25 for the first time since they started tracking the cancer in the 80s. This is the power of vaccines. The HPV vaccine is extremely effective at preventing cancer. Viruses can be oncogenic. Get your vaccines and protect yourself!

He is risen

Safety inspector: I found two major issues with your Death Star. For one thing, there are no railings. Grand Moff Tarkin: We believe railings would detract from the austerity of our bottomless chasms. Safety inspector: That brings us to my second issue.

Missouri court strikes down 2022 law that pulled library books off shelves missouriindependent.com/2025/11/18/m...

The CDC website now disseminates disinformation about vaccines, claiming erroneously that infant vaccines might cause autism, when we know conclusively that they do not. It is difficult to overstate just how dangerous this is. www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safe...

the poetry focused English majors have a new job market, apparently

I dreamed I was made director of a small library in the middle of nowhere so I moved to this place in the mountains where I knew absolutely nobody and it turned out they just wanted to lure in a human sacrifice in case you were wondering what the level of “feeling targeted as a profession” was

Libraries purchase books. When you see a book at the library, it isn’t “free” the library bought it. which in turn means that the community bought it. In other words, library books are not lost sales for authors and publishers; they’re positive sales. Active sales. Those are bought.

We need libraries for so many reasons. www.11alive.com/article/news...

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Our dog Maggie passed away peacefully on Saturday. Maggie was never a perfect dog nor the dog I imagined she would be when we rescued her, and I miss my good little girl very much. She is at peace, and I'm grateful for all the time she gave us. 🐩 🐾 💜

Hear me out. Every time you share wrong answers you are helping to sabotage the LLMs that will eventually scrape your answer. But also it is a completely true thing that we used to store files in vending machines to keep them cold while away from home.

Lots of potential in this, both for saving time and for teaching PubMed proximity searching 🙂 well done @marijanewhite.bsky.social!

Hey #medlibs, I built a tool for making it easier to create proximity search strings in PubMed. Check it out! I presented at PNC-MLA this afternoon and will follow up with a link to the recording when it's posted.

Got a notification that EndNote will soon be requiring you to change your password every 180 days….I’m confident this won’t cause any issues for researchers…. Right? 😅 #medlibs

Final quote from Carlos Chaccour: “The legitimate discussion risks being drowned by the synthetic noise.”

Some Halloweeny Medical Subject Headings: 👹 Spirit Possession 🍫 Chocolate (was only added in 2016!) 👻 Erythrocyte Membrane (mapped to "ghosts") 🦇 Chiroptera 🩹 Mummies 🧙‍♀️ Witchcraft 🕴️ Parapsychology & Telepathy 🦄 Legendary Creatures 🍬 Candy 😱 Fear

The NIH has insisted there are no banned words But, an analysis by @jeremymberg.bsky.social found over 700 hundred grants changed their titles from '24 to '25 Some see it as a small price to pay to keep their grant, but others are worried about what comes next www.statnews.com/2025/10/29/n...

What did people do before SNAP?” They died. Healthcare, vaccines, disability support, education & food assistance are vital to our survival. They’re why the average lifespan isn’t 35 anymore The mark of a good & decent society is whether it sees the value in helping others.

When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same. Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

but if it pops what topic will every other academic conference presentation cover? /s

“A quick systematic review”

We searched according to PRISMA #medlibs

PubMed is running on autopilot during shutdown, but key independent committee has been abolished #medlibs www.bmj.com/content/391/...

Coffee, pop punk playlist, and seven projects before noon let’s go.

This likely AI-hallucinated reading list is part of a ~60-page summer supplement, and in an initial spot-check, I'm having trouble confirming any of the quotes. But it's all such transparent filler that I can't help feeling sympathy for the lone freelancer apparently saddled with producing it.

Hey all, here's a post at @ssrc.org about how anti-trans talking points are getting wrapped into Google's AI search results. AI search not only cites anti-trans disinfo, but sanitizes it, making practices like conversion therapy sound legitimate and safe.

This was doubtlessly my favorite instructions to write as part of a rather extensive new My NCBI libguide - the option to make a My Bibliography public is a link that only appears as italicized text. 🤦🏼‍♂️ guides.library.kumc.edu/My-NCBI/My-B...

I hope everyone at MLA is having a crabulous time!

There is some unfortunate irony that the Alternative Text field in LibGuides is a single line rather than a paragraph text field, and therefore is mildly difficult to read when the text runs longer than the field will display.

SCOOP: DOGE notified the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) today that the entire staff is being put on administrative leave effective immediately, I’ve learned from an agency source. They’ll be cancelling huge swaths of grants/contracts and starting a Reduction in Force (RIF).

😈

“The quality of the applicant’s we are seeing is not as strong as those of 15-25 years ago. The millenials, gen x, and newer librarians do not fully understand the world of librarianship.” In a recent hiring process, I frankly found the younger candidates to be generally more prepared 🤷🏼‍♂️

This, by the by, is an effing disaster if it holds up. The number of public libraries that will go under if IMLS is shuttered is mind-boggling. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

'Delete' comes from Latin 'deletus,' past participle of 'delēre' which means "to wipe out, destroy." We'll probably wipe out/ destroy this later.

For my colleagues who are medical librarians, MLA has published a statement addressing the recent flurry of executive orders and other actions taken by the federal government: mailchi.mp/184b14bd09ff...

It's me. The biomedical librarian is me. I wasn't sure whether to stay anonymous or not but I don't think it matters anymore, maybe. Thank you @usha.bsky.social and others at @statnews.com for talking about what is happening in the U.S. right now. www.statnews.com/2025/02/17/t...

#medlibs - MLA is beginning to list out alternatives to removed public data, and invite suggestions for anything not listed. www.mlanet.org/article/acce...

Enjoyable thread on science illiteracy and communication!

I do think this is a step in the right direction from MLA. When you want to respond to events effectively it can be hard to be nimble. I’m hopeful that what quickly follows from this will be loud advocacy, support, and steps we can all take to help. #medlibs

#medlbs #canmedlibs #ukmedlibs

#medlibs also follow @medsyntax.bsky.social if you aren’t already. Their app is incredibly useful for catching syntax errors in single line searches 🙂

You don't get new members or keep your old ones by sitting on the sidelines. ALA is slow to react, if they do at all, and often respond only in ways that directly benefit ALA. They're way too expensive for out of pocket. Why join if there's little to no value for me as a professional?