Module 2

You used an electronic index, a guideline index, and a web search engine to retrieve information relevant to your clinical problem. Compare and contrast your results. Which resources were useful/ not useful for your information retrieval task, and why? Identify some alternative strategies for retrieving relevant information - would context relevant information retrieval be useful? (You must be detailed enough here, so that your blog entry evidences your use of both NGC and Google).

The electronic index came from UofU Eccles Health Science library (i.e., CINAHL or PubMed), the guideline index was Endnote, and the web search was google. I find that an electronic index or a guideline index are probably the easiest ways to tell if your sources are legitimate. A web search engine requires more judgment on the part of the researcher of the source because anyone can write almost anything on the internet and the websites may not necessarily be reviewed on a regular basis by professionals, which is the case with electronic indices.

I still really have a hard time with endnote and hope I can learn how to use it better in the future, it is not user-friendly for me and I tend to have more problems that helps with it.

The main thing I can say about retrieving relevant information is that you need to pay attention as to whether or not the site is updated on a regular basis, and by whom. You need to look at information from and about the author, to see if it's legitimate. You need to see if the sources comes from a trusted and legitimate website (i.e., a legitimate company or University). In other words, whenever using the internet, you need to be asking questions constantly as to the legitimacy of the information.