Rabnett’s Sprachduktus ist einfach umwerfend. 🙂 Man denkt, er schreibt über PubMed-Erweiterungen, stattdessen stolpert man von einer komischen Beschreibung zur nächsten wobei einem das Lachen vor lauter staunender Erkenntis sozusagen im Halse stecken bleibt (wobei ja der größte Nervenkitzel für mich ist, dass ich die Hälfte nicht verstehe – was allerdings wieder für Satori spricht, hehehe). Recommended!
Über die einflutenden Erstsemester und die Schwierigkeit PubMed zu schulen:
Any moment now the new academic year will be sharking round the corner and sloping in fast. Soon the library will be filled with the slapping of flip-flops, the rattle of back pack straps, and the incessant digital smoke-signalling of smart phones as our students return to their colleges and coffee shop queues like Deleuzian nomads. (It must be my age, but teaching PubMed these days feels rather like trying to give a workshop on needlepoint at a skateboarding convention.)
Werden die Flyer überhaupt noch gelesen, wenn schon NLM’s kurzfristige Änderungen sie nicht obsolet machen?
What’s more, some of us are no longer convinced that printed handouts have much significance for students steeped in the culture of me, Wii and PS3. Still, we know that some will actually read the thing and find it a useful learning tool. So we persevere. (Durchhalteparolen sind nicht pervers)
Dabei gilt es die Schulungslust der Studenten durch Modernisierung wachzuhalten:
We’re also rejigging seminar presentations to minimize the yawn quotient and to postpone for as long as possible the lurch of induced slumber. Essential to this project is avoidance of the irritating monotone and cruelly prolonged torpor that mar an otherwise mediocre training session.
Wenn man wirklich was für’s große Ziel tun will, sollte man einen großen Wurf versuchen. NLM’s September-Änderungen an PubMed sind’s jedenfalls nicht:
Naturally such preoccupations lead to the kind of critical observations that come with too intimate an acquaintance with PubMed. Librarians are its most discriminating users, and so our opinions should count for something. None of the following suggestions will be cause for much flapping in the pigeon loft. But if our ultimate goal is to improve health care for all, then it is always worthwhile to expect more of our indispensable PubMed and to dream about how its beneficial influence could be extended. From what I hear so far, September’s promised changes will not be terribly exciting.
Rabnett bricht dann auch gleich noch eine Lanze für die Ausländer unter uns:
Foreign-language articles, or, What’s wrong with diacritics?
We’re not dummies. Why does PubMed insist on holding our hand? Let’s see the actual title of the article in the citation – in the original language. Most of us are using sophisticated computers with heaps of memory and advanced graphics. I’m not afraid of Chinese characters or Turkish accents. Being forced to browse non-English titles in translation and coddled in their chaste square brackets is as ersatz an affair as watching a dubbed film. Why can’t PubMed citations be allowed to be themselves, umlauts and all?