Nursing Tutorial

Searching the Web | sites and meta sites

The World Wide Web is not organized according to any scheme (although the information contained in any individual site may be an organized database, such as MEDLINE or your library's catalog.) As you saw in modules 1 and 2, you might search a biomedical database such as MEDLINE, or a database of psychology literature, such as PsycINFO.

No one organization owns, monitors, or controls the Internet. As a result, finding information can be challenging and requires combining search strategies.

There are several ways to explore the Web. Sometimes you know the URL (uniform resource locator), much like you'd memorize someone's phone number, and you can locate a site directly. You may find out about a specialized Web site that has a collection of Low-Literacy Patient Education Handouts:
http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~hclinic/handouts.dir/lowlit.dir/lowlit.html

or a site that links to:

Electronic Discussion Groups for Nursing
http://healthweb.org/browse.cfm?categoryid=1723

Often a Web site will provide a collection of preselected links in a category, also known as a "meta-site." Meta sites are an excellent starting point for beginning searchers. For example:

NYU Bobst Library Web Links of Interest to Nursing
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/sci/health/healweb.htm#nur

The Hardin Meta Site of Nursing Links:
(aggregates nursing information, identifies it as "best of the Web.")
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/nurs.html

Nursing Sites on the WWW (from University at Buffalo)
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/hsl/internet/nsgsites.html

From a site or meta site one can link to related sites ("surf".) But the Web is not arranged in a linear way, and this can be a very inefficient way to search for specific information. Searching for information on a specialized topic requires some strategy. Continue this tutorial to learn some strategies.

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