Entry requirements

General entry requirements

Aims

This course provides an overview of on-line resources relevant to health and medicine and instruction in finding and using them. No previous knowledge about Internet or information seeking is required.

Content

Part of the course is devoted to general bibliographic resources, that is, places where information can be obtained about books, articles, and other publications.

Both printed and electronic materials are considered, and field trips to libraries are included to examine secondary, tertiary, and reference literature.

Primary emphasis, however, is on resources that can be reached by way of Internet. Participants learn to seek bibliographic information about books through university OPACs (on-line public access catalogues), the Swedish national database Libris and similar union catalogues in other countries, as well as catalogues for major university consortia. They also learn to use various ISI indexes and Uncover to find journal articles.

Special attention is given to medical and health-related sources, such as the book database locatorplus at the National Library of Medicine in the United States, Medline, CINAHL, and other indexes.

Participants also learn more about World Wide Web, including menus, search engines, and gateways. They then practice searching for WWW sites of professional organisations, on-line journals, foundations and foundation centres, national and international funding agencies, clinical trial databases, and much more. Emphasis is again given to medical and health sites.

Exercises are individualised so that all participants can focus on their particular fields of professional interest.

Instruction

The course includes lectures, computer demonstrations, and group and individual assignments.

Assessment

Written assignments and written examination.