Contrary to the earlier situation where citing the blogs did not add value to the research work, presently they have gained their due value. For example some of the recent documents available through PubMed and Google Scholar contain references of blogs. A citation analysis in the references of an article about “Web 2.0″ gives a right image of modern trend. Moreover proliferations of blogs are accountable. Blogs in specific field shows that there are many blogs on the Web offering news & modern trends in the specific areas of human knowledge.atients often step into clinics with a preconceived idea about their diagnosis and treatment option.”
Google search for medical Blogs with the search query ‘allinurl: medicine blog’ resulted in the retrieval of about 40,000 blogs. While searching for medicine in the title of blogs it gave 48,900 with the search query ‘allintitle: medicine blog’; & search for “med” in the blogs’ URL retrieved about 50,000 hits with the search query ‘allinurl: med blog’. Blogs are not created by group of people as Wikis are created. It is a collaborative source because readers can comment and publish their own ideas about the topic, & can ask more information. Blogs can be considered as a very useful & good source of information to find information about the trends & debates in specific field, although the evaluation of sources must be considered. The library services like, Current awareness services can be properly disseminated through the blogs.
Specialisation of the blogs plays an important role in timeliness, perfection, & accuracy of blogs. Specialisation saves the time of the users & searching through massive amount of uncontrolled information in every field is mixed up. Specialisation is a best way to optimise the potential use of blogs if they are provided through modern non-conventional library & information delivery services.
Information therapy, Patient education, Patient guidance in hospitalisation, Patient discharge information, & Doctors time schedule, Doctors list based on specialty, Insurance and information about diseases caused by climate changes, Common diseases, Prevention of common diseases, Seasonal diseases, can be presented and shared through the Medical & Hospital library blogs etc.
Wikis are Web 2.0 tools. It is very important for reference information services in medical library& information centres. As it is collaborative nature, so WIKI provides opportunity of instantaneous revision & to develop an efficient repository of new information. Case studies in the field of Medical sciences, as a source of evidence plays very vital role, while they are not categorised as incase of formal sources of information like books, thesis, journal, etc. hence most of the time they are unorganised. The only chance for utilising case studies is, when they are reported through a journal.
WIKIS are used as an open-source depository of case studies, so it is a best source of evidences. Medical librarians can create a special case study in wiki for any type of Medical specialty , then Medical science students, Physicians, & Librarians can collaborate & send related case studies to the wiki editorial board & then these can be evaluated & added to wiki according to the terms and conditions of wiki. Medical librarians can easily support Medicine 2.0; Evidence based medicine and information therapy approach through wikis & other platforms of Web 2.0 such as Slide shares, Video shares or Picture shares. Wikis may be used for patient history written by patients themselves about their illness & sufferings.
Slide shares, Video shares & Photo shares are the appropriate community tools of Web2.0 to share medical images, atlases, educational video clips in medical libraries. These are created and shared by consumers as well as professionals. Librarians can digitalise the images embedded in atlases & books to share the pictures with the clients for educational purposes.
There are good examples of application of slide share and video share inMayo Clinic web site, such as slides of Brain anatomy,Exercises for osteoporosis, Causes of back pain videos relating toCT scan,How cancer spreads.