Internet Searching and

Evaluating Websites
(Basic Course: Module 2)

26 May 2018
 Table of Contents
• Gateways, Search Engines, Databases
• Google vs. (Google) Scholar vs. PubMed
• Boolean searching
• Advanced searching
• Evaluating Web Sites

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 Gateway – subject specific
• Library gateways are collections of databases
and informational sites, arranged by subject, that
have been assembled, reviewed and
recommended by specialists
• Gateway collections support research and
reference needs by identifying and pointing to
recommended, academically-oriented pages on
the Web. Examples:
• WHO A-Z health topics list
• Yale University – Forestry and Environmental
Studies Alumni Research Guide
University of South Carolina, Beuford Library, 15 June 2015
www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/lesson4.shtml
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 Web Search Engine
• A software system that is designed to search for information
on the WWW. Results are presented in a line of results
often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Information may be a mix of web pages images, and other
types of files. Some search engines also mine
data available in databases.
• Also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm
on a web crawler. Examples:
• Google
• Google Scholar (more academic)
• Yahoo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine 15 June 2015

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 This is how Google presents the results
of your HINARI search. The most
relevant cite is organized into sections.

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 Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly
search for scholarly literature. You can search across
many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers,
theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic
publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories,
universities and other scholarly organizations.

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 In Google Scholar, the HINARI results are
either an article about the program or one
with HINARI being the author’s name.

Note that, in the right column, there are full-text access links to
the articles. If an Open Access journal (nih or plos), the link
will work. For the commercial publishers, you must use the
HINARI link to Scholar or the Hinari Journals collection A-Z
list. or you will be asked to login or pay for the article.

26 May 2018
 After accessing Scholar from HINARI’s Search
inside HINARI full-text through database and
article searching list, we have clicked on full-text@
My Library. Now you can open the full text article
by clicking on Article or Journal or going to HINARI
Journal Search or Summon.

The Scholar links are a function of the

Summon Search Tool. Each country
must be ‘configured’ and this is an
ongoing process begun in 2015.

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 We have displayed the Advanced
Scholar Search option of Google
Scholar. Note the various options for
refining a search and also that you can
change the number of results per page.

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 Databases – subject specific
• Devoted to a single subject; created by researchers, experts,
governmental agencies and other subject specialists who
have professional knowledge of a particular field and have
accumulated information and data about it.
University of South Carolina, Beuford Library, 15 June 2015
www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/lesson4.shtml
• A collection of information organized in such a way that a
computer can quickly select desired pieces of data/an
electronic filing system with search tools
• Organized by fields, records and files
• Examples:
PubMed - a free search tool to over 26 million citations
SCOPUS – Elsevier’s abstract and citation database of peer-
reviewed literature

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 Google (search engine)
Advantages Disadvantages
• Searches articles, • No indexing terms
books and • Huge retrieval of almost
webpages any topic
• Has advanced • No ability to select
search options citations for downloading
• Can limit search by or printing
dates, document • Built in relevancy ranking
types, language, based on times cited
domain and more • Cannot limit to journal
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articles
 Google Scholar (search engine)
Advantages Disadvantages

• Searches journals, • No indexing terms

books and more • Huge retrieval of
academic sources almost any topic
• Can download • No ability to select
citations for
individual citations into downloading or
bibliographic managers printing
• Contains citing • Built in relevancy
information with links to ranking based on
sources citing a specific times cited that…
term • May result in bias
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toward older literature
 PubMed (database)
Advantages Disadvantages
• Well indexed using Medical • Access limited almost
Subject Headings (MeSH) exclusively to basic and
• Can 'explode' terms health sciences journals
• Contains 5,609 current journals that are indexed in the
in health sciences database
• Includes citations of e-journals • Does not search full-text
prior to publication of articles
• Can download info to
bibliographic managers
• Can select citations to
download or print

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 Search: hospital infections
developing countries
(performed 20 October 2016)
• Google: 2,390,000 citations; first citation – July 2011;
World Health Organization
in 1st 50 articles, no 2016 citations listed
• Google Scholar: 1,110,000 citations; first citation –
March 2005; The Lancet
# in 1st 50 articles, no 2016 citations listed
• PubMed: 5426; first citation – October 2016; American
Journal of Infection control
articles ‘sorted by recently added’ date
(not ‘sorted by relevance’ although this is an option)
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Why different Google search results? Search from
Bosnia, goes to Croatia, then to 1 of 3 servers in
Czech Republic and finally to 1 of 3 Google servers.
Different searches have different ’hops’ & results.

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Why Search Strategy is Important?
• Health care includes the provision of information to
consumers or professionals (reliable, accurate, up-to-
date)

• Information explosion- billions of documents in the WWW;

hard to find the ‘needle in the hay stack’ and know which
source is best for a specific situation;

• Evidence-Based Medicine - clinicians are not using

enough evidence in practice

• Systematic search strategy should be adopted when

dealing with clinical questions to avoid ‘information
malpractice’

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 Example (Steps 1-4)
1. Ask: What health problems are associated with water pollution?
2. Need: scholarly primary research
3. Main Concepts: health, water, pollution
4. Select terms:
– Broader terms: ‘health’, environmental degradation’,
‘agricultural management’,
– Synonyms:
health, illness, disease, etc.
water, rivers, lakes, sea, domestic water, etc.
pollution, ‘oil spills’, chemical, biological, toxicity, etc
– Alternative spellings: none
– Plurals: river(s), lake(s), disease(s)
– Capitals: e.g. name of a specific lake, disease, region

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 Types Source

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 Select a Source (Step 5)
Tertiary Sources
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Easy access Lag Time
Ease of use Outdated
Concise Incomplete information
Relatively inexpensive Incorrect interpretation
Secondary Sources
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Rapid access to the primary literature Lag time
Generally high standard journals Command language varies
Ability to perform complex searches Proficient search skills are needed
Routine updates on selected topics Can be expensive
(alerts)
Primary Sources
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Original data Large volume data
Unbiased information Time consuming
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 Search Construction

10. #4 or 5 11. #6 or 7

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 Boolean (Search) Operators
• connect terms and locate records
containing matching terms
• inserted in a search box – AND, OR, NOT
• AND, NOT operators are processed in a
left- to right sequence. These are
processed first before the OR operators
• OR operators are also processed from left-
to-right
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 AND Operator
(to combine two concepts and
narrow a search)

the AND operator is used to combine two

concepts e.g. hip AND fracture – in the
shaded area; retrieves items containing all
the search terms
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 AND Operator
(to combine three concepts)

the AND operator is used to combine three

concepts e.g. hip AND fracture AND elderly –
in the shaded area.

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 OR Operator
(info containing one or other term;
will broaden a search)

renal OR kidney – in the shaded area with the

overlap in the middle having both search terms;
retrieves items containing either search term or
both search terms

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 NOT Operator
(in one term or the other - will
narrow a search)

meningitis NOT viral

meningitis NOT viral – in the shaded area;

eliminates items in 2nd term (viral) or both
terms; search results will contain bacterial
meningitis
Note: NOT does not work in Scholar and
possible would eliminate some useful
26 May 2018 references; use judiciously
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 Other search engine functions
• Phrase or Proximity Searching: “…” or (…)
– allows you to search for an exact phrase
– “information literacy” or (malaria parasite)
• Truncation: * or $
– allow you to search for singular and plural spellings
child* for child OR childs OR children
parasite* for parasite OR parasites
• Wildcard or Alternate Spellings: ?
– can be used to substitute for characters anywhere in a
word
wom?n would search for “woman” and “women”

For more detail and examples for Hinari resources, see

Hinari_Basic_Course_Module_2_Internet

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Africa AND (HIV OR tuberculosis)

HIV tuberculosis

Africa

Africa AND (HIV or tuberculosis) – in the shaded area

The (OR) operator retains items in each term and the AND
operator is used to combine two concepts
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 More Search Techniques
• Field Specific Searching
– author, title, journal, date, url, etc.
• Language Restrictions, Humans or Animals, Gender and
other limits
(discussed in HINARI Basic Course – PubMed Filters)
• Relevancy Ranking
– a grading that gives extra weight to a document when
the search terms appear in the headline or are
capitalized
– every found document is calculated as 100% multiply
by the angle formed by weights vector for request and
weights vector for document found

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 Criteria for Evaluating Websites
• Accuracy – research methods explained, sources cited,
includes bibliography; is a well written/edited information
• Authority – author recognized as expert or from an
academic or scientific organization (see url/web address)
• Currency – date website updated: use of current research
& sources
• Coverage – inclusion of material you need
• Design – ease to navigate (including links) and find what
you want speed of website
• Objectivity – methods/results are not influenced by
particular perspectives, values or bias; is not a personal
website or that of an organization with a specific agenda
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Evaluating Web Pages - Resources
• www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-
gallery/finding-resources/library-
databases/databases-overview/evaluating-websites
(primary source)
• medlineplus.gov/evaluatinghealthinformation.html
• guides.library.cornell.edu/evaluating_Web_pages
• usm.maine.edu/library/checklist-evaluating-web-
resources
• www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/lesson5.sh
tml

26 May 2018
 Google Search: Dengue Fever

This is the 1st page of a Dengue

Fever Google Search. Looking
at the URLs, some sites are very
relevant (CDC, WHO), some
marginal (Wikipedia) and others
not useful (Dengue Fever Music).
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 PubMed abstract: article about limits of
searching ‘symptoms’ in Google, Yahoo and
Bing

26 May 2018
 ‘Misled by the Web’
• Use of the Internet to determine whether the medication
pregnant women are taking or are about to take is safe for
an unborn baby.
• Study of “safe lists for medications in pregnancy”
websites found 25 that contained inconsistencies and false
reassurances or alarms based on “inadequate evidence.”
• “Among medications approved for use in the U.S.A. from
2000 to 2010, over 79% had no published human data on
which to assess teratogenic risk (potential to cause birth
defects), and 98% had insufficient published data to
characterize such risk.”
.

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• 25 Web sites characterized 245 medications as “safe” for
use by pregnant women, which “might encourage use of
medications during pregnancy even when they are not
necessary.”
• Online was sometimes contradictory. “Twenty-two of the
products listed as safe by one or more sites were stated
not to be safe by one or more of the other sites.”
Safe lists for medications in pregnancy: inadequate evidence base and
inconsistent guidance from Web-based information, 2011.
Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, 29 Jan 2013 (Online Version of
Record published before inclusion in an issue)

26 May 2018
 Search Strategy material developed by:
Irena Bond, Library Manager
Associate Professor of Library and Learning Resources
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

This is the end of HINARI Basic Course

Module 2
There is a Work Book to accompany this part of
the module. The workbook will take you through a
live session covering the topics included in this
demonstration with working examples.
Updated 2018 05
26 May 2018