Subject: [CODE4LIB] openphi and/or healthlibrarian

From: Eric Lease Morgan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 19:18:46 -0400

How many people here work in a library where medicine is a topic of  
interest, and how many of those are familiar with OpenPHI [1] and/or  
HealthLibrarian [2] ?

OpenPHI is a start-up company who is using open source software to  
harvest and index open access content for the purposes of creating  
useful indexes to medical information. For example, they have   
collected content from MEDLINE, Biomed, and other peer-reviewed sites  
to create a pretty comprehensive and competitive index called  
HealthLibrarian. Lots o' content!

I'm not sure of all the details, but the folks at OpenPHI are looking  
for librarians like ourselves (hackers) to integrate HealthLibrarian  
into their library offerings -- a possible alternative or supplement  
to the indexes we are already providing. I think they are offering  
free trials to their index through Web Services interfaces sans the  
advertising, etc.

Being a new company and very open to all things... open, I believe the  
folks at OpenPHI are open to constructive criticism on how to provide  
viable library services to... libraries.

[1] http://www.openphi.com/
[2] http://www.healthlibrarian.net/

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame

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From: Jason Stirnaman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:55:27 -0500

Thanks, Eric. I hadn't heard of these. We'll check it out.
Another interesting one is Mednar (who named this thing?) - a medical
open access federated search engine launched by fed search veterans Deep
Web.

http://mednar.com/mednar/

Jason
-- 

>>> On 7/9/2009 at 6:18 PM, in message
<[email-masked]>, Eric Lease Morgan

---

From: Eric Lease Morgan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:33:48 -0400

On Jul 10, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Jason Stirnaman wrote:

>> HealthLibrarian.

I think things like HealthLibrarian, Mednar, the previous work done by  
Index Data with open content, the cooperative alluded to by OCLC and  
Ebsco, and Serials Solutions Summon all represent a trend and/or  
opportunity for folks like ourselves. Identify (open access) content,  
harvest it, index it, and provide access to the index. If we were  
smart and cooperative, then we would create these indexes in some sort  
of sharable format (like a specifically structured Lucene index)  
allowing libraries to mix & match indexes to meet local needs. I will  
collect and index philosophy and theology materials. MIT will index  
computer science and mathematics. NCSU will collect engineering and  
agriculture. Etc. Once we get this process under our belts we could  
then go after the "closed" access content. By going through such a  
process we will educate ourselves, improve our skills, become more  
self-reliant, and save buckets of money in the long run. Not to  
mention provide value-added access to the materials needed by our  
patrons.

At the same time, I also understand many of us would rather pay for  
the convenience of having this index packaged for us. If not, then  
there never would have been a market of Poole's original periodical  
index.

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame

(574) 631-8604

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From: Joe Hourcle <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:49:10 -0400

On Fri, 10 Jul 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:

> I think things like HealthLibrarian, Mednar, the previous work done by Index 
> Data with open content, the cooperative alluded to by OCLC and Ebsco, and 
> Serials Solutions Summon all represent a trend and/or opportunity for folks 
> like ourselves. Identify (open access) content, harvest it, index it, and 
> provide access to the index. If we were smart and cooperative, then we would 
> create these indexes in some sort of sharable format (like a specifically 
> structured Lucene index) allowing libraries to mix & match indexes to meet 
> local needs. I will collect and index philosophy and theology materials. MIT 
> will index computer science and mathematics. NCSU will collect engineering 
> and agriculture. Etc. Once we get this process under our belts we could then 
> go after the "closed" access content. By going through such a process we will 
> educate ourselves, improve our skills, become more self-reliant, and save 
> buckets of money in the long run. Not to mention provide value-added access 
> to the materials needed by our patrons.
>
> At the same time, I also understand many of us would rather pay for the 
> convenience of having this index packaged for us. If not, then there never 
> would have been a market of Poole's original periodical index.

Didn't someone suggest a while back that if every major research library 
were to chip in a fraction of an FTE, we could then pool resources and 
dedicate a couple of people to make stuff (I believe it might've been 
mentioned in the context of open source software) for the library 
community?

-Joe