[OPLINLIST] FIY: INTERNET SEARCHES: LIBRARIANS DO IT BETTER

[Frank Atkinson]

Thought this might be of interest!

 

INTERNET SEARCHES: LIBRARIANS DO IT BETTER

 

[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Megan Rauscher] According to a study reported
today at the Medical Library Association's annual meeting in Phoenix, cancer
patients are more likely to find what they are looking for with a
librarian-mediated search instead of "going it alone." Over the last five
years, Ruti Volk, a professional librarian and manager of the Patient
Education Resource Center (PERC) at the University of Michigan Comprehensive
Cancer Center, and colleagues have done about 2,100 searches for cancer
patients. After each mediated-search, patients are asked to complete an
evaluation on the information provided to them. Results from 513 evaluations
revealed several interesting findings, Volk noted in an interview with
Reuters Health. "One of the most interesting was that 65 percent of patients
said they were not able to obtain the information that we sent to them from
any other source. They were not able to get it by themselves by using the
Internet; they didn't get it from a healthcare provider or from a cancer
organization." An additional 30 percent of PERC visitors said the librarian
provided some new information. Only 4 percent said they found all the same
information on their own. "This demonstrates," said Volk, "that even though
the information is supposedly so accessible and everything is on the web,
people still need the help of a professional to find information that is
relevant to them that is current and accurate and authoritative."

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews
<http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=20
06-05-22T171250Z_01_DIT257042_RTRUKOC_0_US-INTERNET-SEARCHES.xml>
&storyID=2006-05-22T171250Z_01_DIT257042_RTRUKOC_0_US-INTERNET-SEARCHES.xml

 

 

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