As we continue our discussion of the definitions of 2.0 and user-generated content (UGC), I thought I’d highlight some other buzzwords and link to a few consumer-oriented resources.
I still trust librarians to help me judge information sources, so my first set of links are to articles that first appeared in The Journal of the Medical Library Association (and now appear on PubMed’s lovely full-text archive).
First, JMLA’s reviews of Healia and Medstory, two “vertical” search engines (meaning they aggregate and organize only health-related information). There are many more vertical search engines, but I couldn’t find any journal reviews for them — please leave a comment if you have a search site you like!
Second, a JMLA article about Electronic Book Search, a service of the Health Sciences Library System at the University of Pittsburgh (an example of a “federated” search engine, meaning they enable searches of multiple collections, not just one). Google, Yahoo, and Ask are all working on federated search (as are some smaller start-ups) so keep your eye out for more “federated” sites.
Third, Consumer Reports WebWatch has created a virtual toolkit for e-patients who are wondering how to choose between the myriad ratings, lists, and guides related to health information online, but I’m most interested to see how their new Full Frontal Scrutiny project develops since it touches on a concept that should be a buzzword: authenticity.
Since I called PubMed “lovely” in the above post, I feel duty-bound to link to a paper I just read about on ResourceShelf.com: “How Do Users Find Things with PubMed?” The authors’ answer: Not easily.
Essentially, in a Google-dominated world, people are growing impatient with search results that don’t immediately deliver what they need. PubMed is tuned for medical librarians, not doctors or patients, and the authors argue for a change in strategy.
Read the full PDF (skip the abstract unless you’re a human-computer interaction scholar):
http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2008-07/2008-07.pdf
I understand that people may have difficulties finding information in PubMed but it remains the crown jewel that made of what ACOR does possible. It is the number one tools to verify the authenticity of people’s claim regarding any unusual treatment. If PubMed was not opened to us we would never have been able to “out” publicly any of the snake oil salesmen or the promoters of whacky treatments (those without any scientific validation).
PubMed is, to me, one of the greatest gifts the American government has made to humanity.
I’m sure the authors would agree — I think they just want to polish up the jewel!
This just in! There is an alternative to the PubMed interface: http://demos.vivisimo.com/clustermed
Or try this one:
http://vivisimo.com/html/biometacluster
And if you really want to get into it, subscribe to this MedlinePlus newsletter:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/medlineplus/listserv.pl?lang=EN
(Thanks again to Gary Price of ResourceShelf.com for these tips.)
Thank you for this information. 🙂
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