TO YOUR HEALTH! BEST MEDICAL
WEBSITES
February
2005
Recommended Library Databases for this Topic
Start with the South Seattle
Community College Library home page! Here you can find our Library catalog and
library subscription databases.
SSCC Library Home Page
http://dept.seattlecolleges.com/sslib
The
following databases are accessible from the Quick Search menu, and
can also be searched from home. For remote access, you must log into Health
Source and ProQuest with your last name and student or employee ID number.
(PubMed is a free government database, so logging in is
unnecessary.)
You may
also want to visit the web sites of the public libraries to search for articles
about your topic. King County Library System, in particular, has a large number
of databases on all subjects, including medical databases. Their health
databases include: Health
& Wellness Resource Center, and
NORD (National
Organization for Rare Disorders).
Seattle Public Library has Health & Wellness
Resource Center. Both
libraries also subscribe to Expanded Academic
ASAP, a
database NOT held by SSCC and an excellent database for finding information on
all subjects, including health and medical topics. Only patrons can access these
public library databases. However, you can easily sign up for a library card
online at both libraries! In addition to their medical databases, both libraries
have links to health sites on the World Wide Web. The King County Library
System’s URL is: http://www.kcls.org
and Seattle Public Library’s web site is located at: http://www.spl.org
Best Medical Web
Sites
You guessed it! A librarian will always recommend library databases! These are accessible via the internet, and you can log in from home. Find fulltext references and search for magazine and journal articles here. Sometimes you may find just citations, but most library databases provide fulltext articles.
All Health Net.com
http://www.allhealthnet.com/
The goal of this medical search engine
is to provide the most comprehensive, highest-quality sources of medical information on the Web.
The Alternative Medicine Home Page http://www.pitt.edu/~cbw/altm.html
This is the place to begin for sources of information about unconventional, unorthodox, unproven, or alternative, complementary, innovative, integrative therapies. The site is maintained by a medical librarian.
CDC Wonder (Center for Disease Control) http://wonder.cdc.gov/
An easy-to-use system that makes available the information resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It provides access to CDC reports, guidelines, and other public health data.
Healthfinder
http://www.healthfinder.gov/
Healthfinder
is an award-winning federal government web site, put together by the Department
of Health and Human Services along with other agencies. It is a key resource for
finding excellent government and non-profit health information available on the
Web.
Healthweb
http://healthweb.org/index.cfm
A subject directory with
links to a variety of health and medical information. HealthWeb collects,
evaluates and organizes Internet-accessible health information and education
resources for health care professionals and consumers. It is a collaborative
project of health science libraries in the Midwest.
King County Public Health
News
http://www.metrokc.gov/health/
Local information about county health services, getting healthcare, obtaining birth and death records, and much more. They include links to external web sites.
Librarians’ Index to the
Internet
http://www.lii.org/
Click on the broad category
“Health & Medicine.” You’ll be amazed at all the great medical
sites you’ll find on this site! These sites have been selected by librarians,
and added to lii.org because of their high quality. You can also do a keyword
search of the lii.org web site to find your topic. Start narrow, but you may
have to broaden your search to find the gold!
Medical Library
http://medem.com/medlb/medlib_entry.cfm
Medical Library provides
patients with reliable health care information from Medem’s partner medical
societies and other trusted sources. Medem is a physician, patient,
communications network.
MedlinePlus
http://www.medlineplus.gov/
This
directory site is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the
National Institutes of Health. It is designed to lead the user to resources
containing information that will help with researching their health questions.
It includes links to MEDLINE and other databases, drug information, a medical
dictionary, a medical encyclopedia, directories of doctors and hospitals,
organizations providing health information, health news.
Nutrition Information and Resource
Center
http://nirc.cas.psu.edu/index.cfm
NIRC
contains information about food science and nutrition, with online fact sheets
and other publications, as well as links to other nutrition web sites.
Patient Advocacy Resources
http://library.uchc.edu/departm/hnet/advocacy.html
This is a guide for patients
and their families, from the University of Connecticut Health Center. The
annotated bibliography and webliography of resources for consumers is intended
to assist patients in becoming advocates for their own health. Topics include:
patient advocacy, internet quick guides, self help groups, medical records,
rights and privacy, informed consent, children, women, disabilities, and end of
life decisions.
Quackwatch http://www.quackwatch.org/
“Your guide to health fraud,
quackery and intelligent decisions.” The site is maintained by Stephen Barrett,
M.D., whose goal is to combat health-related myths, fallacies, frauds and
fads.
Directories & Search Engines
Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com/
The largest subject directory on the web. It provides you with a hierarchical list of subjects. Click on the links to progressively narrow your search and zoom in on a specific topic, or do a keyword search to find your topic.
A catalog of over 11,000
selected Internet resources covering all academic subject areas and cataloged
according to the Dewey Decimal classification system
INFOMINE Scholarly Internet
Resource Collections
http://infomine.ucr.edu/
A
librarian built virtual library of about 116,000 Internet resources relevant to
academic research. It contains websites, databases, electronic journals,
bulletin boards, and many other kinds of information.
Google
http://www.google.com/
A
"smart" search engine. It also allows you to search for images and newsgroups.
Tends to give you the most relevant links near the top of your
list.
Profusion
http://www.profusion.com/
An intelligent
"meta-search engine" that searches several search engines simultaneously.
5 Hot Searching Tips
1. Think about how to describe your topic.
Be as descriptive and precise as you can.
2. Use a plus (+) in front of each required
search term:
+allergy
+peanut
Use quote marks (" ") around
a phrase:
"stress
management"
Use a minus (-) to exclude a
word from your search results:
+cancer
-astrology
3. If your results aren't satisfactory, try
another strategy.
4. Read the Help or Search Tips for a
particular search engine or database. Each search engine is different, and there
may be helpful hints for more effective searching.
5. Try using more than one search tool
(database, search engine or directory). Different search tools yield different
results.