WHAT IS THE WORLD WIDE WEB?

Living Internet.com http://livinginternet.com/
The history, the how it works, the why it matters, and the security issues of the internet, e-mail, worldwide web, usenets, mailing lists and Internet Relay Chat. Nice backgrounder.

Finding Information on the Internet: a Tutorial http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html

Earthlink's Guide to Using the Internet http://www.earthlink.net/internet/

HOW CAN I FIND THE LATEST CANCER INFORMATION? PRIMARY RESOURCES

Genesis Health System http://www.genesishealth.com/
Click on Cancer Program for a very full set of local information and resources as well as links to online information.

Cancer News on the Net http://www.cancernews.com/
Read it online or register to receive it by e-mail.

National Cancer Institute http://www.nci.nih.gov/

Cancer Trials, from the National Cancer Institute http://cancertrials.nci.nih.gov/

OncoLink http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu/
Possibly your best all-purpose beginning resource, with links to symptom and pain relief, FAQs, trials, personal experiences, financial information, mailing lists, book reviews, and more.

American Cancer Society http://www.cancer.org/

Medline Plus http://medlineplus.gov/

MayoClinic Cancer Resource Center http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/common/htm/canhpage.htm

HOW CAN I BE SURE THAT THE INFORMATION I FIND IS "VALID"?

Be skeptical. Your first question should always be "Who sez?" Start with sites sponsored by government agencies, primary organizations, universities, hospitals, and health sites that subscribe to the HON Code of conduct. Your next question should be "Why are they giving this away for free?" For some organizations, collecting and disseminating this information is their primary purpose. For others, it's a way to make money. For any site, look for frequency of updates. Check to see if other major sites link to it. Look to see who is responsible for maintaining the web site and answering questions. Check to see if they give a bibliography. If they're presenting original research, see if it explains the research method and test population. Many high quality sites post the HON code symbol, indicating they've agreed to abide by the HON Code of Conduct.

HON Code of Conduct for Medical and Health Web Sites http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html?HONConduct719879

AMA Guidelines for Medical Web Sites http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v283n12/full/jsc00054.html

QuackWatch: Message to Cancer Patients Seeking Alternative Treatments http://www.quackwatch.com/00AboutQuackwatch/altseek.html

Google http://google.com -- results are displayed in order of the number of times sites are chosen by other sites as links.

HealthWeb http://healthweb.org/
A set of carefully chosen evaluated web resources.

The Virtual Chase: Groups That Alert the Public to Internet Fraud, Fanaticism and Bad information http://www.virtualchase.com/quality/alert.html

FINDING SUPPORT GROUPS AND OTHER PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH CANCER

Deja.com http://deja.com
Searches news groups to answer your questions.

OncoLink: Cancer Listservers http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu/resources/faq/listserv.html
Includes not only contact info for groups but also tells you about the basic mechanics of listservers

Oncolink: Personal Experiences and Essays http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu/psychosocial/personal/

National Cancer Survivors Day Internet Information Guide http://www.ncsdf.org/index.html

Cancer Survivors Gathering Place http://www.geocities.com/cancer_survivors/

Keepin' the Faith http://www.ktf.org/

Cancer Quilt http://www.cancerquilt.com/

National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship http://www.cansearch.org/

Cancer Survivors Online http://www.cancersurvivors.org/

Yahoo! Cancers: Personal Experiences http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/Diseases_and_Conditions/Cancers/Personal_Experience/

NCCS: National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship Cyberspace Town Hall LISTSERV

Oncolink: Confronting Cancer through Art http://www.upenn.edu/ARG/CCTA/

FINDING JOURNAL ARTICLES

Medline http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/medline.html

Complementary and Alternative Medicine Citation Index http://nccam.nih.gov/nccam/resources/cam-ci/)

CancerLit Topic Searches http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov/canlit/cltopic.htm

Iowa public libraries offer online access to full-text articles. They require either your library card bar code number or a password for access. Example:

Davenport Public Library http://www.rbls.lib.il.us/dpl/index.html
offers access to a couple of medical databases via EbscoHost.

Medical Journals: WebMedLit: Oncology http://webmedlit.silverplatter.com/topics/onco.html

FAQs FOR CANCER PATIENTS AND FAMILIES

OncoLink: Frequently Asked Questions about Cancer http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu/faq/
Exceptionally thorough -- FAQs about specific forms of cancer, and about things like financial information, alternative medicine, cancer listservers (very good starting advice), clinical trials, etc.

Breast Cancer Answers http://www.medsch.wisc.edu/bca/bca.html

OnHealth: Conditions A to Z: Cancer http://www.onhealth.com/ch1/resource/conditions/sub3.asp

Patient's Guide to Cancer Treatment http://patientsupport.com/

What Is Hospice? FAQ from American Hospice Association http://hospice-nc-sc.org/hospice4.htm

RELATED ISSUES

Nutritional Support for Oncology http://www.nutritiondynamics.com/concern_sup/oncology.asp

HealthGate's Guide to Medical Tests http://www3.healthgate.com/mdx-books/tests/index.asp

OncoLink: Financial Issues for Patients http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu/onco_bill/

Medicare Consumer Information Page http://www.medicare.gov/

Medicaid Information http://www.hcfa.gov/medicaid/medicaid.htm

OncoLink: Religion at a Time of Crisis http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu/psychosocial/qol/qol_6.html

Cancer Trials http://cancertrials.nci.nih.gov/

Eating Hints for Cancer Patients http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov/eating_hints/eatintro.html

RxList http://www.rxlist.com/
Search by keyword for drug information including what its purpose is, indications for its use, side effects, interactions with other drugs, how it should be used, and any special instructions

SOME GOOD GENERAL HEALTH RESOURCES

Healthfinder: a Gateway to Consumer Health and Human Services Information http://www.healthfinder.gov/
From the Department of Health and Human Services

InteliHealth, from Johns Hopkins http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/408/408.html

Mayo Clinic Health Oasis http://www.mayohealth.org/

Medical World Search http://www.mwsearch.com/
"Search full text nearly 100,000 Web pages from thousands of SELECTED medical sites"

PDRNet for Consumers http://www.pdr.net/consumer/
An enormous database of consumer health information; free registration required.

Hardin Metadirectory of Internet Health Sources http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/
From the University of Iowa's Hardin Library.

SOME GOOD ALL-PURPOSE WEB DIRECTORIES AND SEARCH ENGINES

About.com http://about.com/
Where real live experts serve as your guides to subject areas, provide key links, and regular articles and discussion forums.

Librarian's Index to the Internet http://lii.org/
High-value informational sites chosen by a team of California librarians.

Internet Public Library Reference Center http://www.ipl.org/ref/

Best Information on the Net http://vweb.sau.edu/bestinfo/
High quality academic level sites, organized by subject -- the site I created for St. Ambrose University.

Direct Search http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/direct.htm
Takes you to the search engines inside hundreds of specialized sites, so you can directly search specific databases of bank rates, physician certification, grad schools, SEC filings, campaign finance reports, federal statistics, NCAA records, and much more.

Excite http://www.excite.com/
Useful features: suggests additional terms you can combine with original search statement, and a chance to click on "more articles like this" whenever you find one that's just right.

FastSearch http://www.alltheweb.com/
Useful features: "world's biggest fastest search engine; 300 million web pages searched in under one half second with highly relevant results"

TAKE A TEST DRIVE:

Try out some of these sites with some medical questions.

1. Click on Genesis Health System http://www.genesishealth.com/. Click on Cancer Program, and then on Support Groups. Under Counseling and Social Support, note that social workers are available to assist you with a number of issues. What is the name of the Oncology Social Worker you can call, and what is her local phone number?
   
   
   
   
2. Click on OncoLink http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu/, then on "Symptom Management." Click on "Fatigue and Cancer." Arrow down to "OncoLink: Automatically Subscribe to CANCER-FATIGUE" and click on it. What do you have to do to subscribe?
   
   
   
   
3. Click on Medline Plus http://medlineplus.gov/. Click on M, then on Melanoma. Click on "General/Overviews." Note that 3 organizations are considered the best possible resource for this topic. Those organizations are the National Cancer Institute, the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center (Oncolink) and what other organization?
   
   
   
   Click on "What You Need To Know about Melanoma," then click on "Signs and Symptoms." What are the four "ABCD" signs?
   
   
   
   
4. Click on http://google.com. Type in the box "vincristine side effects faq" and click on "Googlesearch" to look for a frequently asked questions file. Google will always display the most frequently linked sites first. What is the top site that comes up?
   
   
   
   
5. Click on Deja.com http://deja.com. Click on "Search Discussions" (it's in very small type below the search box). Type "melanoma" and click on "Search" -- if you don't use the pulldown menus to change the search scheme, it will automatically search only recent discussions in the standard archive. What's the discussion group name for the first result?
   
   
   
   
6. Click on Medline http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/medline.html. Type "cancer" in the box and hit enter. In the box under Add Terms To Query, type "nausea" and hit enter. This still yields over 7000 documents. Under Add Terms To Query, type "diet" and hit enter. Click on the gray box that says "Retrieve 45 documents." There is an article by Mercadante called "Nutrition in Cancer Patients." Click beside it on "See Related Articles." It will reshuffle the deck and come up with a new set of results resembling this one. What's the title of an article by M. Shike?
   
   
   
   
7. Click on RxList http://www.rxlist.com/ and type "vincristine" in the search box and hit enter. Beside "Generic Name VINCRISTINE SULF P-FREE," click on "Search for Vincristine Patient Information." Click on "Vincristine (oncovin)," then on "vincristine injection." What over-the-counter medications you may be taking might cause a problem in combination with vincristine?