New Zealand Study Finds That Healthcare Workers Don’t Use Internet-Based Research Tools

A study by four researchers in Christchurch, New Zealand found that a frightening 37 percent rarely or never consulted Google and 58 percent rarely or never consulted Ovid Medline or PubMed. Medical and dental staff consulted search engines (83 percent) or library resources (63 percent) at least weekly, higher than nursing or allied health staff. All professional groups consulted coworkers or experts more frequently than they did online or library resources. They used Google more often than any other electronic resource (big surprise) and it received the highest value rating (yikes). Almost all searched using keywords; few used MeSH terms. Over 82 percent wanted more training on searching Internet-based resources, so there is still hope for educating them on the value of better sources.

Citation/URL:
Hider, Philip N., Gemma Griffin, Marg Walker [all of University of Otago-Christchurch], and Edward Coughlan [Christchurch Hospital], The information-seeking behavior of clinical staff in a large health care organization, Journal of the Medical Library Association 97(1):47-50, January 2009, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2605037

A GUIDE TO THE MEDICAL LITERATURE FOR STUDENTS—AND EVERYONE ELSE

A Student’s Guide to the Medical Literature “has been designed especially for medical students, but it can be used by anyone who wants a guide to the medical literature.” It has almost everything you might need, including: a tutorial on a 4-step approach to reading medical literature; search strategies and links to “best” Web sites; “a guide to critical appraisal of journal articles;” an interactive glossary with statistical terms hotlinked; calculators for outcome measures; and a list of useful references. There’s even a version to use on a Palm or pocket PC. This was a fourth-year medical school project of Katherine McLucas [University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, USA], and is being kept up by the librarians there.

URL: http://grinch.uchsc.edu/sg/

THE ENDANGERED JOY OF SERENDIPITY

William McKeen wrote eloquently on this subject in the St. Petersburg Times, 26 March 2006. Here is just a few quotes to give you the flavor of the article.

He requires students in his journalism class at the University of Florida (where he is chair of the department) to subscribe to the New York Times. When telling a student that no, he cannot just read it online, he said, “Because then you would only find what you’re looking for.”

“Serendipity is a historian’s best friend and the biggest part of the rush that is the daily magic of discovery.” “When you know what you want—or think you do—you lose the adventure of discovery, of finding something for yourself.” “We must allow ourselves to be surprised. We must relearn how to be human, to start again as we did as children—learning through awkward and bungling discovery.” At the end of your life, do you want to look back and say, “I could have missed this.”

URL: http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/26/Perspective/The_endangered_joy_of.shtml

WHY PEOPLE TRUST INTERNET HEALTH INFORMATION

Envision Solutions has published a new survey, Diving Deeper Into Online Health Search: Examining Why People Trust Internet Content & The Impact of User-Generated Media. There are some frightening findings here. Read it at http://www.envisionsolutionsnow.com/healthsearch.html

QUICK LOOKS AT USEFUL WEB SITES

EU RSS Feeds Available
http://europa.eu/rapid/syndication/setLanguage.do?language=en
For now this list includes press releases and commissioners’ speeches, but more are to come.

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_
search_engines.php
Worth taking a look at to augment your regular Google or Yahoo! searches.

A Blog Just for YA Librarians
http://www.yalibrarian.com/
Alternative Teen Services is a new blog from a group of librarians at the Kansas City, Missouri Public Library.

Strange Maps
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
Includes such wonders as “The World as Seen from New York’s 9th Avenue” (a New Yorker cover), Oz, and a diagram of the US Interstate system.

The Phrase Finder
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/index.html
Find the origins and meanings of phrases, sayings, and idioms in categories such as from the sea, Shakespeare, the Bible, proverbs, euphemisms, and the body.

The Law in Plain English
http://www.nolocast.com/
Podcasts from publisher Nolo.

Inventor’s Handbook
http://web.mit.edu/invent/h-main.html
Eleven chapters covering intellectual property, how to conduct a patent search, applying or a patent, licensing, and other practical matters. Also at the site: inventor of the week, games and trivia, and other links and resources. From Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Engineering.

Help for Teaching Statistics
http://exploringdata.cqu.edu.au/
Exploring Data has activities, worksheets, slides, datasets, articles, and resources “designed to enhance the statistics knowledge of the [secondary school] teacher.” From Central Queensland University, Melbourne, Australia.

GOOGLE PATENT SEARCH DEBUTS

You can now search over 7 million US patents via Google Patent Search. Images include the abstract, text, claims, and drawings. You can search by patent number, inventor, assignee, classification, issue or filing date. Check out patent number 1, or all those by Thomas Edison, or input “martini” and see what you get. The searches are very quick and, most importantly, free.

URL: http://www.google.com/patents/

SEARCH ENGINE JUST FOR ENGINEERING, MATH, COMPUTING

TechXtra searches 25 databases covering engineering, math and computing, some full-text and some covering the “deep” web. You can search just articles, websites, books, industry news, job announcement, technical reports, ePrint archives, learning and teaching resources, or latest research—or any or all of the above. Content of the databases that are not engineering, math or computing, are not retrieved, so relevance should be high. TechXtra is a product of Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, but includes databases from the UK, USA, and Australia.

URL: http://www.techxtra.ac.uk

GREAT NEW MEDICAL SEARCH ENGINE, AND ANOTHER ONE TOO

HEALIA is a super new consumer health search engine. It was developed with a grant from the USA National Cancer Institute. It’s only in beta now, but works wonderfully. I did a couple of my favorite searches and got very good, relevant, results.

Results are presented, along with lists of suggested similar, more general, and more specific searches. You can also filter by any one or more of the following: professional; male or female; kids, teens or seniors; African, Asian, Hispanic, or Native heritage; basic or advanced; HONcode, URAC accredited, or privacy policy rated sites; easy to scan, fast loading, for text browsers, or interactive tools. Very impressive.

I also tried another recommended site, Mamma. It is a “smart” metasearch engine, created as a master’s thesis in 1996, and now run by Mamma Media Solutions. It searches most of the major medical sites and the deep web (though it doesn’t exactly how it does it). I performed my two test searches and got fewer good results. The list was preceded by “identified” sponsored links, but I found some questionable links in the rest of the results, too. There are some suggested alternative search topics, but the filters are only found under Power Search. They include choosing directories, indexes, pay-per-click, and adult content reduction. On the whole, a less powerful and desirable site.

URLs:
HEALIA: http://www.healia.com
Mamma: http://www.mamma.com

NEW SEARCH ENGINE—ACCOONA

I just ran across this new European search engine. Accoona uses artificial intelligence technology of produce “better” searches. You can search in German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese and choose searching on the web, for business information, or for news. My experience with it had mixed results, but try it for yourself.

URL: http://eu.accoona.com/en/