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Research: web-searching
Websites
recommended by
Richard Tillman BA, MIFA Reg.
Increasing
numbers of people are now turning to Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(CAM) and initiatives are also underway to provide a more integrated healthcare
system within the National Health Service (NHS). Consequently, users,
practitioners and health care professionals need to either provide, find, track
and/or evaluate information sources in CAM. A one day conference held on the 31st
of October ’00 at the British Library (BL) and organised jointly with the
Foundation for Integrated Medicine (FIM) was designed to address these issues.
Many
people make the mistake of using generic search engines which have no browse
option, are built automatically by robots, have huge indiscriminate databases
and no quality evaluation - better options are via
·
Meta-directories,
which have catalogues of subject gateways and directories, search and browse
options and some quality evaluation.
·
Subject
gateways which are smaller databases compiled by humans which have catalogues of
portals and other sites and include search and browse options.
·
Medical
portals which target a specific community and cover both internet and other
types of resources.
·
Websites of
major organisations which provide reputable information ‘straight from the
horses mouth’.
These
websites would include
British
Library http://www.bl.uk
Health
Care Web Pages http://www.bl.uk/services/stb/hcis.htm
Foundation
for Integrated Medicine http://www.fimed.org
HealingOnLine
http://www.healingonline.com
Research
Council for Complementary Medicine http://www.rccm.org.uk
National
Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine http://nccam.nih.gov/nccam
The
Alternative Medicine Foundation http://www.amfoundation.org
Some
medical portals
ThriveOnline
http://thriveonline.com
Your
Life – Your Choice http://www.life-choices.com
Health
A to Z http://www.healthatoz.com
The
Alternative Medicine Homepage http://www.pitt.edu/~cbw/altm.html
A
few subject gateways
OMNI
http://omni.ac.uk
Medical
Matrix http://www.medmatrix.org
Meta-directories
Alpha
Search http://www.calvin.edu/librarysearreso/internet/as
The
Argus Clearinghouse http://www.clearinghouse.net
Contributed
by Richard Tillman