Research Guide | Finding articles | Finding web pages | Finding books | Citations
Finding Web Pages about Health
Three ways to start
- 1. Use the URL (address) of a page you know about.
To get to a specific web page, put the URL into the address box at the top of your browser screen and then hit the Enter key. URLs have to be typed in exactly correctly, exact spelling and punctuation. A URL never contains a space, but they sometimes use the underscore character _ or other characters that you can make by holding down Shift and using the number keys. - OR 2. Follow links from known pages to other pages.
The "Where to search" section of the Research Guide page has many links that can take you to useful pages. The Librarians Internet Index and other Subject Directories provide lists of recommended links. - OR 3. Use a search engine, like Google.
The Advanced Search screens for Google, Yahoo and Bing can save you time if you limit your searching by domain -- .gov for U.S. health agengies, .edu for university research, and .org for nonprofit organizations.
Top level domains
An important part of each URL is the top level domain, which you'll find at the end of the URL for a basic home page, or just before the first single slash. For instance .gov is top level domain in these URLs:http://www.cdc.gov
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/
The top level domain usually tells you something about who owns the webpage:
- .com Commercial sites want to sell you pills, refer you to the doctors who've paid to be listed, or make money from you in some other way. Their advertising may be blatant or it may be subtle. Avoid .com sites for medical information.
- .edu Educational and university sites offer great medical information, either for the health of their students or for the education of nurses, medical technicians, doctors, etc. However, looking for web pages by using a search engine and limiting to .edu sometimes leads to course descriptions that mention your search words, but don&39;t give any information.
- .gov The federal government is a very reliable source of information for most health topics. They create many informative web pages to help us get healthy and stay healthy, so we can be productive (tax-paying) citizens. But watch out for bias on topics like abortion and environmental racism which are hot political issues.
- .org Non-profit organizations come in very different flavors. Non-profit health providers and community clinics like the Women's Cancer Resource Center link to helpful and reliable web pages. BUT, political or religious organizations are also not-for-profit – their web pages contain many inaccuracies and exaggerations that they hope will persuade voters. Also, many commercial sites (which ought to be.com) are using .org, trying to fool you into trusting them. You can usually spot these imposters by finding advertisements or products for sale on their pages.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an unreliable and unstable source of information. The edit this page tab allows anybody and everybody to remove or add whatever they want to Wikipedia articles. For most articles, clicking on the history tab will reveal that the text is being changed many times every month, and sometimes many times every day. Because it is so unstable, most CCSF instructors will NOT accept Wikipedia articles as sources for your research. However, if you really know nothing about a topic, parts of a Wikipedia article can be used to help you start on your research. The first paragraph usually gives many technical terms that might make good search words. The list of topics given in the Contents box can help shape your research. The bottom of the article may have External links to reliable sources. If you start your research in Wikipedia, always confirm your facts with other, reliable web sites before you use them for a research project or to make decisions about your health.revised by Karen Saginor August 2009