Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries

Library Grand Rounds [Archives]

Cool Tools and Technologies:
Convergence in Computing and Libraries
Tuesday, September 19, 2006

• Presentation Slides (PDF)
• Presentation Audio/Video Stream

Geek-fest! The speakers at this Library Grand Rounds explored the accelerating convergence of multiple information technologies and services and their potential application to patient care, education, and research in the academic medical center.

"Convergence"--from the Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence ): a trend where some technologies having distinct functionalities evolve to technologies that overlap; i.e., multiple products come together to form one product, with the advantages each initial component.

An example of hardware convergence is the Motorola Q, which combines the functions of telephone, email, chat, web browser, camera, personal organizer, and more, in a hand-held, portable device.

An example of application convergence is the "mash up," which combines content from more than one source to create a completely new service. An example is the canonical http://www.housingmaps.com/ , which creates a visual housing (sales, rentals) search page via dynamic overlays of Craigslist home listings on Google Maps.

Speakers:
* Bill Garrity, Director of Biomedical Libraries, Dartmouth and DHMC;
* Bill Weyrick, Senior Manager of User Support, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Information Systems

Library Grand Rounds are a forum for presenting information resources and tools of interest to Dartmouth clinicians. Please contact us (biomedical.libraries.education@dartmouth.edu), if you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future Library Grand Rounds.

The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center designates this educational activity for up to one Category I credit towards the AMA Physician's Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those credits that he or she actually spent in the educational activity.

The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.