|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you choose to follow any of the links to the rated Internet sites below, you will be leaving the Strategian Web site. If you wish to return to this page from the site you are sent to, please use the Back option of your browser. 1. PubMed -- http://www4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/ (National Center for Biotechnology Information--at the National Library of Medicine) Rating: 25/30 -- Quality 23/25 -- Uniqueness 20/20 -- Refresh Rate 13/15 -- Loads Fast 8/10 -- Organization 89/100 -- Total **Last Reviewed March 1, 1999** Review: PubMed is truly one of the best resources--"free" or commercial--available on the Internet. It is built from 2 main parts--MEDLINE and PREMEDLINE. MEDLINE is the premier indexing and abstracting source covering biomedical literature published worldwide. Psychology (especially physiological psychology), medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences are covered through the indexing and abstracting of articles from some 3,900 journals. PREMEDLINE is the "current awareness" component of the database. It is the interim file into which partial records for journal articles are placed while they are being fully processed for inclusion into MEDLINE. In addition, PubMed also contains records for articles that are beyond the usual subject coverage of MEDLINE but which come from journals that are selectively indexed for MEDLINE. These records are never fully processed for inclusion into MEDLINE but remain available in the database. PREMEDLINE is updated daily; MEDLINE is updated weekly. PubMed, as a whole, contains some 9 million records dating back to 1966. This is a great site through and through. Help information is plentiful and easy to understand, the search interfaces are clean and straightforward, and the entire site is kept up-to-date. Plus, besides the database itself, there are a range of wonderfully-useful tools for different needs. For instance, the PubMed Journal Browser is a great tool for finding the full title of a journal, an official journal abbreviation, or an ISSN. All in all, for anyone with an interest in and need to find information in the areas covered by this site, PubMed is a must link ... How-to-use: Both the Basic and Advanced Search modes in PubMed work very well. The Advanced Search mode though offers some very useful features when searching such a large database--for instance, a "list terms" option that allows you to select available search terms for a specific bibliographic field and the ability to limit a search by a specific field such as journal name, language, publication type, etc. Back to the Top 2. National Academy Press -- http://www.nap.edu/ (The National Academies of the United States) Rating: 26/30 -- Quality 25/25 -- Uniqueness 10/20 -- Refresh Rate 11/15 -- Loads Fast 8/10 -- Organization 80/100 -- Total **Last Reviewed February 10, 2000** Review: The National Academy Press is the publishing arm of the National Academies of the United States--the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. This site provides access to the complete text of over 1,500 books--reports authored by commissions and panels of the various academies. These reports not infrequently find their way into the daily news as they examine prominent scientific and technical issues facing the United States and the world at large. The panels and commissions that author the reports are often composed of leading experts on the various topics, and the information in the reports has a deserved reputation for being authoritative and objective. The reports can be searched in two ways--by title and bibliographic information and by the complete text of every page of the 1,500+ books. In addition, it is also possible to locate reports of interest by browsing through a list of subject categories. Once a relevant report is identified, the text of the book can be viewed in Open Book format. This format essentially means that the text has the appearance of having been scanned and 1 page is viewable at a time. Each screen, however, includes several controls for moving through the text page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter, back to the table of contents, to options for searching text within that book, etc. Some books also offer the option of viewing the text in sections in HTML format. The National Academy Press Web site is very straightforward and easy to use for the most part. It is optimized for online purchasing of the various books though which makes the full text options a bit less apparent on the screen. All in all though, this site is a marvelous resource--a must link ... How-to-use: The available searching and browsing options are very powerful. I find all 3 of them to be very useful. Back to the Top 3. Whole Brain Atlas -- http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html (Keith A. Johnson, M.D. and J. Alex Becker) Rating: 28/30 -- Quality 25/25 -- Uniqueness 9/20 -- Refresh Rate 8/15 -- Loads Fast 6/10 -- Organization 76/100 -- Total **Last Reviewed March 3, 1999** Review: The Whole Brain Atlas is a unique site that shows images of slices taken from the human brain. Brains attacked by various cerebrovascular, neoplastic, degenerative, and infectious diseases can be compared to each other and to the normal, healthy brain. Either a slick Java-based tool can be used to access and choose the images or a more familiar table-of-contents approach can be chosen. In either case, images created by several different techniques can be viewed. This is definitely a complex site both in how it is organized and manipulated and in the information it provides. Fortunately, extensive help information is provided though much of that information is also of a technical nature and could be difficult to quickly understand. Response time for the site is average; keep in mind that the images are fairly large. All in all, a unique and interesting Web site ... How-to-use: For a first-time user, your best approach may be to browse a couple images and then study the Help Page for navigating through the site. Back to the Top Questions about any or all of the above? Do you have a favorite Internet site(s) that you would like to nominate for possible inclusion on these lists? Please let me know. |
|
Go To ...
|