Searching Medline and the Internet

Written By
Myles Clough, MD, DPhil
Mel Heiman, MD
Eugene Sherry, MD
Xan Phung

This chapter is concerned with helping you find useful information on the Internet. The ability to search a database is one of the great advantages of computerised information storage. However, it does have frustrations, born of the enormous amounts of data that is stored and the fact that simple searching strategies may not give you what you need.

There are three potential responses to this situation, learn to use searches effectively, abandon using the Internet for information or wade through a mass of superfluous information. These pages are for those who would like to chose the first option!

We have divided the topic into: (1) searching the literature using the Medline database, (2) searching the Internet in general, and (3) searching the subset of the Internet which contains the most valuable orthopaedic information.

Searching the Literature can be done for free through the Internet Grateful Med (IGM) or the PubMed entrances to the Medline Database. Via this route you can get access to abstracts of the majority of papers published in major orthopaedic journals. Using the Loansome Doc facility you can also obtain paper copies of the articles of interest for a modest fee and within a few days. Your search may turn up a huge number of papers, few of which meet your needs. To avoid this frustration we suggest a number of strategies in the didactic session and have constructed 2 workshops, one on PubMed and one on IGM.

The Internet as a whole can be searched using the major search engines such as AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite, HotBot. Use of these engines and strategies to improve your chances of finding the pages that interest you are discussed in the didactic session and opportunities to use these skills are provided in the workshop.

If you wish to confine your search to sites with confirmed orthopaedic content you can use the OrthoSearch or OrthoGuide search engines or review the browsable collection of links in Orthopaedic Web Links (OWL). These subjects are discussed in greater detail in the didactic session and the workshop of the subject.

Overview:

Comment: A reader should be able to see from this page where to go, depending on his/her current state of knowledge about the topic

Table of Contents

• Searching Medline (didactic)
• Searching the Orthopaedic Internet (didactic)
• Workshop on Internet Grateful Med
• Workshop on PubMed
• Workshop on Searching the Orthopaedic Internet

Acknowledgements & Authorship

Promotion for ISOST

Links

• All external links mentioned on all pages of this module arranged in alphabetical order

Feedback

Please send in comments about this module of the Guide to the Orthopaedic Internet.