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University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus
Health Sciences Library

Finding It Fast! Locating Medical Information on the World Wide Web

Searching for relevant and reliable medical information on the World Wide Web often seems like an exercise in futility when a simple search retrieves millions of results. You've probably wondered if there was some way to improve your success rate after a session of scanning expired links to not-so-relevant information. Here are a few suggestions to help improve your success:

Table of Contents:

 

When seeking information, network with colleagues and other resource people to gather ideas:

    • Share ideas online through discussion lists and newsgroups. Chat, Email, and discussion lists or newsgroups allow Internet users to share information quickly.

Use a catalog or directory that links to web sites on your topic.

Some consumer health catalogs or directories are:

Some professional medical catalogs or directories are:

Use a special purpose search engine. These search engines usually index a high quality selection of known or important medical web sites.

Go to a large site, often called a "destination" site, that's likely to post the type of information you need. Use the site's search engine to find relevant pages. Examples of large sites with their own search engines are:

To find a "destination" site on your topic, try typing your major keyword into the Google search engine: http://google.com.

Use a "metasearch" engine, such as Ask Jeeves (http://ask.com/) to begin your search. Read the help file first to improve your questioning strategy (http://help.ask.com/en/docs/about/help_central.shtml).
Other popular metasearch engines are:


Use a general search engine as a last resort. Bookmark the site, or make it your homepage for quicker access. Before searching, read the help file and use the tips provided there to construct your search strategy. Using the features provided by the search engine can greatly improve the quality of your results and reduce the number of results. Also, plan to use more than one search engine, since different engines produce different results.
To select the best search engine for your needs, consider:

    • Where and how does it search?
    • How does the relevancy ranking work? (Google - http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html)
    • What special search strategies does it use?(Alta Vista - http://help.altavista.com/) Some Alta Vista's most important features include:
      • Case sensitivity - use capitals for proper nouns, but don't capitalize other words, for example, DARE
      • Phrase searching - quotes around a phrase tell Alta Vista that terms must be found together and in that order, for example, "refusal skills"
      • Truncation - use * to indicate that a root word could have several endings, for example, evaluat* (retrieves evaluate, evaluates, evaluation)
      • Must include - use + to indicate that a word must be included in every result retrieved. This is most effective when more than one term in your search is designated must include, for example, +tobacco +"refusal skills" programs
      • Must exclude - use - to indicate that a word must be excluded in every result retrieved, for example, +tobacco +"refusal skills" programs -"Philip Morris" (retrieves pages that discuss tobacco refusal skills programs, but NOT pages that mention Philip Morris)
    • How easy is the search form to use? (Google Advanced Search - http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en)
    • Can you use natural language in your search statement? (Ask - http://www.ask.com/)  
    • Processing speed   
    • Results list presentation? (Dogpile.com - http://dogpile.com)  
    • Duplicate results? (Mamma.com: The Mother of All Search Engines -  
      http://www.mamma.com/)  
    • Can you get to the search engine quickly? (Go to Search Engine Watch for a list of the top search engines)  

Suggestions:

Don't waste your time! When you use a search engine, remember that the probability of finding relevant materials can drop off significantly after the first 20-50 resulting links. Even if your results are in the thousands, only scan the first few results pages, linking selectively to the sites most likely to provide the information you're seeking.

Practice these simple suggestions and you'll find that you're searching more efficiently for medical information with more effective results!

Copyright 1998 -2008
This page may be copied and distributed with permission from:

Lynne M. Fox
Health Sciences Library, UCDAMC
12950 E. Montview Blvd.
P.O. Box 6508, Campus Box A003
Aurora, CO 80045

303-724-2121; Fax- 303-724-2166

The URL of this page is http://hsclibrary.uchsc.edu/education/finding-it-fast.php
Questions about this page should be directed to Lynne.Fox@uchsc.edu