A new generation of tools for search, recovery and quality evaluation of World Wide Web medical resources
| Pages | 138-143 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520010330319 |
| Published date | 01 April 2000 |
| Date | 01 April 2000 |
| Author | Isidro Aguillo |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
A new generation of
tools for search,
recovery and quality
evaluation of World
Wide Web medical
resources
Isidro Aguillo
Introduction
The ``portal'' is becoming the one-stop shop
for information resources on the Internet.
They are acting both as a source of data and
also to increase interaction among users
(Lynch, 1998). The nucleus of a portal is
usually a large directory or search engine with
additional resources including news and other
information, updated very frequently, and
with access to experts and user communities.
Portals are also being used to access, from a
single interface, a huge number of databases
and electronic journals, acting as gates to the
invisible Internet, an important hidden
resource.
A new portal on health-related resources
mainly devoted to Spanish-speaking countries
is being prepared. During the design stage,
several important problems related to
resource compilation and quality evaluation
have been found. Some techniques and
strategies to face such problems were
developed, and the design for the first part of
the project (acquisition and evaluation of the
resources) is described.
Framework and methodology for the
project
The Internet is already a valuable information
resource in medicine, with plenty of data
available for both physicians and general
users. Nevertheless, there is great concern
about the explosive growth of this medical
information on the Net and the quality of
such critical resources.
Taking into account these challenges, basic
points for the design of the portal were
adopted:
.The portal and its resources are mainly
devoted to health professionals, with the
main emphasis on biomedical
researchers. The objective is to focus on
quality information provided by reliable
sources. Nevertheless, other sectors of the
society may be a target for the directories,
such as librarians, information brokers,
physicians not in research, university
students, policy makers and journalists.
.The coverage will be international,
including resources in all Latin-alphabet
The author
Isidro Aguillo is Head of the Internet laboratory in the
Department of Bibliometrics and Document Analysis in
Science and Technology, Centre of Scientific Information
and Documentation, Madrid, Spain.
Keywords
Information retrieval, Internet, Health care,
Information services, Quality control, Evaluation
Abstract
Although the Internet is already a valuable information
resource in medicine, there are important challenges to be
faced before physicians and general users will have
extensive access to this information. As a result of a
research effort to compile a health-related Internet
directory, new tools and strategies have been developed
to solve key problems derived from the explosive growth
of medical information on the Net and the great concern
over the quality of such critical information. The current
Internet search engines lack some important capabilities.
We suggest using second generation tools (client-side
based) able to deal with large quantities of data and to
increase the usability of the records recovered. We tested
the capabilities of these programs to solve health-related
information problems, recognising six groups according to
the kind of topics addressed: Z39.50 clients, downloaders,
multisearchers, tracing agents, indexers and mappers. The
evaluation of the quality of health information available
on the Internet could require a large amount of human
effort. A possible solution may be to use quantitative
indicators based on the hypertext visibility of the Web
sites. The cybermetric measures are valid for quality
evaluation if they are derived from indirect peer review by
experts with Web pages citing the site. The hypertext
links acting as citations need to be extracted from a
controlled sample of quality super-sites.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
Received February 2000
Accepted April 2000
138
Online Information Review
Volume 24 .Number 2 .2000 .pp. 138±143
#MCB University Press .ISSN 1468-4527
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