ArticleJournal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA2013
Our words, our story: a textual analysis of articles published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association/Journal of the Medical Library Association from 1961 to 2010.
Article in Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- The I's have it: everything needed to practice medical librarianship starts with an I.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2026Article
- MLA Research Training Institute (RTI) 2018 and 2019: participant research confidence and program effectiveness.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2024Article
- The evolution of our profession and association from 1998-2023: reflections from four Medical Library Association leaders.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2024Article
- One leg at a time: medical librarians and fake news.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2024Article
- Mapping the health science librarianship research field in 2012-2022.The journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association · 2022Article
- Promoting new and expanded roles for librarians and information specialists.Information services & use · 2022Article
- What we talk about when we talk about medical librarianship: an analysis of Medical Library Association annual meeting abstracts, 2001-2019.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2020Article
- Building visualization skills through investigating theJournal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2020Article
- Trends in HIV Terminology: Text Mining and Data Visualization Assessment of International AIDS Conference Abstracts Over 25 Years.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2018Article
- Let's get a stronger evidence base for our decisions.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2016Article
- Linking research to practice: the rise of evidence-based health sciences librarianship.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2014Article
- Health Libraries and Information Services in Tanzania: A Strategic Assessment.Annals of global healthArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeThis lecture explores changes in the medical library profession over the last fifty years, as revealed by individual word usage in a body of literature.
methodsI downloaded articles published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association and Journal of the Medical Library Association between 1961 and 2000 to create an electronic corpus and tracked annual frequency of individual word usage. I used frequency sparklines of words, matching one of four archetypal shapes (level, rise, fall, and rise-and-fall) to identify significant words.
resultsMost significant words fell into the categories of environment, management, technology, and research. Based on word usage changes, the following trends are revealed: Compared to 1961, today's medical librarians are more concerned with digital information, not physical packages. We prefer information to be evidence-based. We focus more on health than medicine. We are reaching out to new constituents, sometimes leaving our building to do so. Teaching has become important for us. We run our libraries more like businesses, using constantly changing technology. We are publishing more research articles.
conclusionsAlthough these words were chosen by individual authors to tell their particular stories, in the aggregate, our words reveal our story of change in our profession.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.