On Odd Names

As an odd-name-having person myself, I was naturally interested in this little discussion going on about whether strange names hurt one's job prospects (also see here, regarding Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale's baby, and here on a number of "celebrity baby names gone bad," and for a current-events take, consider the younger members of the Palin family).

I personally have not felt impeded by my name in terms of career advancement, but you never know. I guess I could be even more wildly famous and successful and possessed of adoring fans by now, if only I'd been able to pass as normal. Alas!

It's certainly true no one can ever spell or pronounce my name right away, and I have to explain it a lot, but I don't really care. 

And it does sometimes gets a little old having to explain it again, but it's also kind of nice to be the only person associated with it. After all, I'm unlikely to be confused with anyone else. When I Google my name, any reference I find is pretty much guaranteed to be me, which is, if nothing else, convenient for ego surfing.

We weird-name-people have that going for us. 

Of course, my own name is sort of marginally weird rather than really outrageously weird, and at least has the advantage of not being something that's a word for something else, like, I don't know, Starlight Happiness. Word names seem to get people looking askance a little more than if it's something that might conceivably be a family name, or come from some obscure ethnic heritage, or something.

Also, it's not really a 'normal' name with a different spelling, like Elizybethe or something, which also seems to be a pet peeve for some people. (Although it is a lot like a variation on Allen or Lynn/Lynne, so that's not entirely true.)

I'll admit I do hear names from time to time and wonder what those parents were thinking...but I would certainly hope I'd never assume anything about the person's character from it, or decline to hire them, if that were the context. 

I generally have to think, heck, it's not as if I'm one to talk about other peoples' bizarre names.

Finally, would I give my own kids, if I were to have them, creative, weird, unusual names? Well, I'm not ruling it out. Keep an eye out for the birth announcements of Starlyght Happinesse. 

My New NCBI

So the new My NCBI is up! 

It's a bit smoother looking, a little less utilitarian and grey and business-like, more pastel and polished.

It's got a new 'home' page that shows a summary of saved searches and collections, preferences, and the databases for which you've established filters. See this tiny screen cap for a view.

There's a new 'bibliographies' feature that lets you save citations for papers (where were you when I was in school?!) I'm going to have to play around with that one and see how it works.

There's also a new search feature in 'filters' that seems pretty handy. You can quickly pull up a specific library to add to your results tab list, rather than scanning down the whole list, for example. And there are links to the various libraries' websites right there, although I did notice that occasionally these link back to the PubMed front page instead.

You have to save a search now before you choose whether or not you want to get email updates, but this is a pretty minor detail.

Basically the new My NCBI looks good to me--some useful additions, and no loss of functionality that I've noticed so far. Users who were familiar with the old one should have no issues with the new, since everything is in the same general place it was.

We're definitely going to have to adjust the specific things we say to students, though, 'cause it does look different. Nevertheless, my geek love of NLM remains as strong as ever.

Better Get Tagging

iLibrarian notes that WorldCat, our favorite giant robot on the catalog playground, is now offering the ability to tag records. 

Users will need to have registered for a WorldCat account, and will have to be signed in to see their tags. You can also see the tags other people have assigned, allowing for browsing based on other users' terms. The announcement states that we should "Stay tuned as even more tagging functionality and display options are incorporated into the service over the coming months," so who knows what exciting things will one day be possible?

Interesting stuff.

To be honest, my tagging activity has really trailed off lately. I've been storing links in Google docs or my browser's 'Favorites' instead, old style, and don't even have a del.icio.us icon on my toolbar right now. I did it for a while, and it's not that I don't see the value of tagging, it's just a habit that hasn't really caught so far.

Still, you never know when it will turn out to be the exact right tool for some task, and I'll leap right back into it. Maybe into WorldCat!

My NCBI

I am wildly excited by the news that My NCBI, which allows us to do more handy dandy stuff in PubMed than we can shake sticks at, is going to be updated on Thursday.

I can hardly wait to see the new version! I hope it includes a way to collect points that can be redeemed for free abstracts or something. (Just trying to think outside the box here.)

Meanwhile, this fab tutorial I did in the spring will be immediately out of date (I think it's actually somewhat out of date already), so I'm posting it while it still has a fragment of relevance. Quick, everyone! Learn to use this version right away, while you still can! Then forget it.

I'm hoping it doesn't change too much, or that student I showed how to use it yesterday will come back on Friday, sign in, and think, "that librarian is such a liar! This doesn't work anything like she said it would!"

That's NCBI: always keeping us on our toes.

Random Movie Review: "Nights in Rodanthe"

I and my gracious spouse saw Nights in Rodanthe last night. I didn't especially want to see that movie, but I did kind of want to see a movie, and that one was free, so there you are. 

It turned out that there was also a free preview screening of Eagle Eye that night. We consoled ourselves afterwards with the thought that it's possible Eagle Eye was worse than Nights in Rodanthe. After all, Eagle Eye has Shia LaBeouf, for whom we have conceived an unyielding dislike. 

Nights in Rodanthe is probably just exactly somebody's type of movie, but not mine. It's about two wounded people who heal each other by challenging ingrained habits and falling in love. Smiling-through-the-tears kind of thing. Happiness! Sadness! Life! Finding out who you truly are!

It's full of overwrought dialogue and fierce emoting by Diane Lane, whom I quite like in some things, and Richard Gere. 

As I said, someone will probably love this movie. It's based on a book by Nicholas Sparks, who also wrote books that became the movies The Notebook and A Walk to Remember. I haven't seen those (and am not about to do so now), but if you liked them, you may like this one.

Briefly, Diane Lane, whose husband left her for another woman but now wants to come back because that didn't work out, is housesitting at her best friend's rustic inn in Rodanthe, NC. Richard Gere is the sole guest, visiting from Raleigh for some mysterious purpose. A hurricane is coming on.

They talk, they challenge each other, they bond, they put up storm shutters. But they're both so very hurt by life! Can they crawl out of their shells and blossom together like the free, beautiful people they were meant to be? Or will she take back her husband for the sake of her moody teenage daughter and sensitive, asthmatic son?

I found it heavy and predictable, with a shallow storyline and no very deep or interesting character development. We've seen all these people before: emotionally wounded artistic woman, callow cheating husband, spunky black best friend, withdrawn perfectionist doctor, sullen teenager, colorful rustic townsfolk, tragically deceased perfect wife, grieving angry family. Not that these can't be workable characters, but you have to do something interesting with them, right?

Because I am ever alert for ways to relate things to the purported subjects of this blog, I must note that it had little to no library application, but did provide the following medically-relevant bits of info:

• Even routine surgery can be fatal
  
• Doctors are human beings who need to give and receive a little love and understanding like the rest of us
  
• Lard is bad for your arteries
  
• Antibiotics and syringes are like gold in Ecuador
  

Enjoy.

Nifty!

Talk about print-on-demand.

iLibrarian and Stephen's Lighthouse both alerted me to the fact that the library at the University of Michigan has installed a machine that will print out "perfect-bound, high-quality paperback" public domain books in just minutes and for about $10.

For those who don't like to read their public domain books on the computer, this is pretty cool. I personally have gotten so used to reading on the computer that I probably wouldn't actually hand over the $10, but I can definitely see it being pretty handy if you prefer paper.

Plus, it's just cool to think of being able to print yourself up a book, with real binding and everything. Much nicer than just printing out a pile of pages to mark up.

Now That's Technology

Improving on my idea of having cell phones beam nutrients into our bodies (also my recent momentary belief that life has a search bar), Emily Lloyd's Shelf Check presents the thought that we could have RSS feeds pumped straight into our veins.

Oh, baby. 

I've been a little lax about my feeds lately, usually only fully catching up with posts on weekends when I have a couple of hours to devote to reading. Having updates sent directly to my veins would save a lot of time. 

I'm assuming here that the veins in question would then transport the information to my brain, because otherwise I have this alarming image of gradually becoming imprinted all over with text as updates get trapped under the skin, without my ever actually reading them...but I'm pretty sure Emily Lloyd's futuristic technology will account for this. 

I'm trying to take a few minutes on a regular basis to keep up with the journals at work, and the library/health blogs I read could probably go into this same category of professional education, but then there are all the less relevant ones that I can't exactly not read if I see they've updated, can I?

Well, yes, I can. I have them separated into folders, and I can leave the non-work-related folders alone at work. Fine, shoot down my own argument why don't I.

Regardless, I'll be signing up for that RSS-to-vein technology when it comes out.