Book Reviews

Title: Health Care Resources on the Internet: A Guide for Librarians and Health Care Consumers Author: M. Sandra Wood, MLS, MBA Publisher: The Haworth Information Press, Binghamton, NY, USA

Details: November 1999, ISBN 0789009110 (paperback), 208 pages, $24.95

Reviewer: Judith Broadhurst, writer and editor, Polished Prose

Reviewed: February 2003

Intended audience

According to the subtitle: Librarians and “health care consumers.” According to the introduction: both of those and “health professionals,” as well.

Intended Purpose

Introduce readers to where and how to find health information on the Internet, including the Web, newsgroups and related resources.

Context and Content

The editor and nearly all of the chapter authors or co-authors are librarians by profession, most of them affiliated with universities, usually working in medical libraries. The 11 chapters cover:

• basic search strategies for online databases
• health information megasites (portals) on the Web
• alternatives for MEDLINE research
• alternative medicine
• searching for information on specific diseases
• consumer health information
• statistics
• electronic journals
• international resources

Some chapters are basically lists of annotated citations, although sometimes in narrative rather than list format; others give instructions on search strategies within the context of that chapter’s focus.

Highlights

The most thorough and useful chapter is the one by helen-ann brown [sic] and Valerie G. Rankow on various free and fee-for-service or pay-per-view gateways to searching the National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE archives of medical journal articles. The co-authors include two tables that compare features and advantages of six free services that offer access to MEDLINE, plus info on four fee-based services.

These charts help readers choose which services may be preferable for their particular purposes. When the authors explain how to narrow a search to a specific focus or to stipulate search criteria (such as the prognosis for a disease), they include a sample search that explains their search strategy, lists the key words that strategy translates to in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), and shows one search result as an example. This chapter is far more valuable for the reader’s long-term benefit than the many other chapters that suggest starting at megasites or Web search engines, and then repeat the same site info throughout the book.

The chapters on statistical information and medical journals are also good, although some of this information is included in others chapters where the authors didn’t stick to their assigned topics. For instance, the chapter on government resources for health information digresses too far into statistical information, especially since that’s the topic of the chapter by different authors that follows.

Limitations

One gets the impression that the authors or co-authors weren’t aware of what each chapter in the book would cover, or at least that there wasn’t sufficient guidance, oversight or actual editing to prevent the considerable redundancy and poor organization of the information. Lack of developmental editing aside, the book apparently had neither a style guide nor a copy editor, judging by the hodgepodge of headings and subheadings and the difficulty of following the presentation in some of the chapters. Even the Web addresses (URLs) aren't written consistently.

Because of the inconsistencies, redundancies and confusing organization, it becomes too tedious to read the whole book thoroughly, so most readers are likely to end up skimming, thereby perhaps missing useful how-to tips. Keeping the how-to info at the beginning of each chapter, followed by lists of annotated citations that adhere to a consistent format would improve the readability and usefulness of this book.

The hardback version was published in 1999, followed by a paperback in 2000. As nearly every chapter states, information online — what exists and, certainly, where to find it — changes daily. At the least, both editions should have included a CD-ROM with live links to the sites mentioned in each chapter, or else aggregated both by category and alphabetically. Better yet, a companion Web site that is updated at least twice a year, even as a paid-subscription service, would be far more useful than a print-only book that can’t help but be outdated before it’s even off the press.

The editor and five of the 17 chapter authors or co-authors are librarians in Pennsylvania — five of them, including the author, at Pennsylvania State University; four others among the authors are librarians at the University of Minneapolis; the rest are at the University of Maryland (two), the University of Michigan, the New York City area or in Florida. All have good credentials, but the concentration at certain universities and in limited geographic areas is bothersome.