How to Find Health Information on the Internet   [Review]

  	
  	
  	
  


	Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship  	Winter 1999  


	DOI:10.5062/F48C9T89


    

Book Reviews
    How to Find Health Information on the Internet
      Cristina Campbell
  Public Health Library
  University of California
  Berkeley, CA
ccampbel@library.berkeley.edu    

How to Find Health Information on the Internet. Bruce Maxwell.  Washington, D.C. : Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998. 332 p. $35.95  (ISBN 1-56802-271-9)  

    Author Bruce Maxwell has put his skills as an investigative journalist to  good use in producing a guide that will save any person looking for health  information on the Internet from the frustration of looking through the  results pulled up by your garden variety search engine. The entries,  which include free websites, newsgroups, and mailing lists, are organized  topically and have made it into the guide only after careful scrutiny by  the author. Annotations provide useful information about content or the  producer. 

    A particularly valuable feature is the introduction which provides  thoughtful guidelines on how to judge the quality of health information on  the Internet. The text of the nonprofit Health on the Net Foundation  (HON) Code of Conduct is reproduced, so the significance of a HON logo on  a site is explained. The author also makes a point of reminding readers  that the Internet is only one of many tools available to the person  seeking health information. 

    Mr. Maxwell has made solid selections for each of the categories of  sources. My only quibble is that the entry for the Yahoo! "health" page  does not alert the users that although the sites have been selected by  Yahoo! staff for their topical interest, they have certainly not been  evaluated for content. One hopes the users will have paid attention to  the author's guidelines on judging for quality! 

    The guide also includes a glossary of Internet terms and a thorough index.   You can visit the author's website (http://bmaxwell.home.mindspring.com)  to read the book's introduction, table of contents, and links to some of  the author's favorite health websites, as well as to ordering  information.

    The author intends to update the guide on a regular basis. Given the  quality of this first edition, I will certainly be watching for future  ones. I hope he will include the new resource developed for consumer  health information by the National Library of Medicine: MEDLINEplus.  (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/); it   would be a worthy and excellent addition to his guide. 

    

  

  
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