Community Health: Finding Reliable Information
Before You Google
Before you Google for medical information, consider this:
Not all of the search results found by Google contain correct information.
For example, see the report linked below for the reported findings from a study conducted by a team of medical professionals.
Keyword Advice
In some cases, each database may use their own controlled vocabulary, which makes finding the correct search terms challenging.
To help find additional keywords, databases offer help by providing links to browse for subject terms or links to similar subjects and articles within your search results.
Some databases may also provide a link to MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) to browse NLM's subject headings.
Evaluating Health Information
There is a lot of health information available on the Web. The following guides and tutorials will help you distinguish between the really good websites with reliable information and those that are "quack" websites containing horribly wrong medical advice.
- Medical Library Association: A User's Guide to Finding and Evaluating Health Information on the WebCriteria to help evaluate health information and links to reliable health websites.
- National Library of Medicine Video Tutorial: Evaluating Internet Health Information16 minute tutorial that teaches how to evaluate the health information that you find on the Web.
- American Academy of Family Physicians: Finding Reliable Health Information on the WebTips on Finding Reliable Information
- MedlinePlus Guide to Healthy Web SurfingTips on evaluating health info found on websites.