Finding information in health and lifestyle

1.3.2 Search engines and subject gateways

Although both search engines and subject gateways will help you find the resources that you need, the types of information that you find will differ.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! search the internet for keywords or phrases, and then show you the results. These results are not mediated by the search engines, and therefore you need to use your own judgement on the reliability of the results. You may, for example, find websites written by experts, alongside websites written by someone with little knowledge of the subject.

You may wish to try using some search engines such as:

• Google

• Yahoo!

• AltaVista

• Ask.com

for the subject you are interested in.

You can also find more scholarly information through the search engine Google Scholar

Google Scholar searches peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organisations. However, as not everything listed on Google Scholar is freely available, you may find that you cannot access certain resources.

Subject gateways (also called Directories), in contrast to search engines, provide links to more academic, reliable information. They usually provide a brief description of the resource as well as a link directly to it. Directories and gateways can be browsed and usually searched too. Most directories and gateways are maintained manually with strictly imposed quality criteria, so the resources directories and gateways return will generally be of a consistent quality. As a result of the limited coverage, you may get a smaller number of results or 'hits' returned from a directory or gateway.

Subject gateways you may wish to try include:

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