Fishing for Health Information
Surfing. Searching. Navigating. Browsing. Imagine these standard methods of finding web pages as ways of electronically fishing for information.
As with information, so with education. If you know how to fish for online materials intended for different educational purposes, you are able to learn and to teach at chosen levels of thoroughness and challenge. When you proceed through these levels in logical sequences, your education progresses with a natural flow.
To characterize the basic kinds of online materials available for health education, this guide associates them with different kinds of waters in which to fish – shallows, currents, mainstream, and depths. In terms of sources of information, these "waters" yield the following:
Shallows – digital versions of authorized health-promotion and patient-education handouts
Currents – original health and medical journalism in formats unique to Web-based publications
Mainstream – extensive collections of authoritative online documents, as assembled, organized, and continually updated by outstanding medical librarians
Depths – supplementary materials of specialized kinds and authoritatively recommended specialty sites
People who already know something about a health or medical topic can add to their knowledge by absorbing information at random. Solo presentations can supply good introductions and solid overviews. But to educate yourself about a subject, you must proceed with some degree of organization through materials that vary in nature, focus, purpose, and level of difficulty. The better these sources are, and the smarter the order in which you consult them, the finer your learning, and the more effectively you can teach.
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