Women’s Health on the Internet

Citation

Cullen, R. (2001), "Women’s Health on the Internet", Online Information Review, Vol. 25 No. 6, pp. 406-421. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2001.25.6.406.6

Co‐published simultaneously as Health Care on the Internet 4(2/3) 2000. ISBN 0789013010

There is a vast and ever‐increasing amount of health information on the Internet and up‐to‐date guides are essential for consumer and librarian alike. The field is already too vast to be covered in any one volume and the approach taken by this book is a very useful one. An important consumer health topic is covered in detail by experts in the field, divided into specific sub‐topics with some introductory overview chapters. The subject knowledge of both editors and contributors makes this work an authoritative source.

Early chapters take a general structural approach, the first by Dolores Zegar Judkins contains one of the most extensive listings in the volume, and gives a good idea of the scope of the field. The second chapter follows up with some useful criteria for evaluating Web sites, and some important considerations in the field of women’s health information. The third chapter covers categories of providers of women’s health information on the Internet, government, teaching hospitals, foundations etc., and covers one of the first of many important gateway sites that list selected, evaluated resources on a wide range of topics. Several such sites are covered in the volume, the ones described in most detail being the Women’s Health Page, to which at least 20 participating medical libraries in the MidWest contribute, and NOAH, the health pages of the New York On‐line Access to Health coalition. The first half of the volume also includes a chapter on using search engines to retrieve women’s health information, by Elizabeth Connor.

The remaining chapters cover specific topics in women’s health, women as health consumers and their rights, physical fitness, pregnancy, menopause, diabetes, and resources for care‐givers. The chapter on pregnancy, childbirth and early parenting by Janet Crum is an excellent resource. The reader is taken through all the stages involved in becoming a parent, Crum listing and evaluating in detail relevant sites at each stage. Sites that favour non‐medical options are noted without any particular position being advocated.

As with many such Webliographies, in some ways less is more. The chapters that are highly selective and evaluate in detail are of more use to the novice searcher, but may frustrate the health information professional who is aware of many excellent sites omitted. There is considerable overlap between chapters and the well‐known mega‐sites are listed many times. A little more coordination between contributors might have eliminated this, but with so many women’s health sites covering a fairly standard range of topics this is inevitable. However, a greater degree of specialisation and focus would have made indexing an easier task. The index is perhaps the weakest part of the volume. It lacks a systematic approach to subject matter because contributors have all taken a different approach to their topic, and the detailed subject comment on which to base a systematic index is often missing.

The strength of the volume however, lies in its overall focus on an important consumer health topic, the expertise and enthusiasm of the contributors, and the many interesting resources it describes. It is an important resource for any consumer health collection, probably almost as useful as some of the very excellent mega‐sites on women’s health to which it draws attention.