ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


5 2 8 /C&RL News ■ July/August 1998

I n t e r n e t  R e v i e w s Sara A m ato, e d ito r

H e a lt h f in d e r .  Access: h ttp ://w w w . 
healthfinder.com.

On April 28, 1998, a year after its incep­

tion, healthfinder revealed new features, im­

proved design, and a .com domain. There 

are many noteworthy and award-winning 

changes since the Internet Scout Report cov­

erage of April 18, 1997.

The new design better meets the site’s mis­

sion of being a “gateway consumer health and 

human services informa­

tion web site from the 

United States Govern­

ment.” The expanded 

site covers roughly 1,000 

subjects— an increase of 

nearly 3,126% from its 

debut. The Department of Health and Human 

Services, Office of Disease Prevention and 

Health Promotion maintains the site in col­

laboration with other federal agencies.

The comprehensive selection policy en­

compasses all the elements of a standard li­

brary selection policy and can be read on the 

site. The resources are added in a process 

slightly analogous to a standing order: devel­

opers do not evaluate each resource, but rather 

evaluate the organization producing the ma­

terial. Once the organization is evaluated fa­

vorably, their material is automatically accepted 

for inclusion. These organizations are prima­

rily government agencies and “other organi­

zations serving the public good,” and must be 

able to respond to information requests from 

users. There are provisions for removing sites 

and suggesting others for consideration.

Essential to the “gateway” function is the 

ease of reaching resources scattered across the 

Internet. To do this, the maintainers place each 

resource into one of six categories on the 

homepage. “Perennial Favorites” are only one 

click away in the “Hot Topics” list; “News” 

offers material from press releases and links 

to sites featuring health news; “Smart Choices” 

emphasizes healthy lifestyles; “More Tools” 

provides further resources including some 

commercial and library resources as well as 

contact information for help groups and health 

organizations; “Just for You” selects items by

audience age; and “About Us” contains the 

structure, scope, and selection policies for 

the site. There is a search function for the 

site as well as a comprehensive alphabeti­

cal listing of topics.

Search results and subject resources dis­

play in a list by title, followed by a list of 

relevant organizations. Adjacent to each title 

is a “details” choice that displays a summary 

of the resource: URL, sponsoring agency, 

description, and a pop-down, searchable list 

of related keywords. The presence of a tiny 

U.S. flag indicates which are products of fed­

eral agencies.

To compare coverage and gauge ease- 

of-use, I conducted a simple spot check 

using three federally produced resources 

from the “Hot Topics” category. Three other 

Web search engines were searched for the 

titles: the GPO’s Government Information 

Locator Service, a simple Yahoo! search and 

the first 80 hits retrieved by Yahoo! via 

AltaVista searches, and Infoseek. Two of the 

sites were unique to healthfinder and one 

was badly parsed into many separate files 

by both Yahoo!/AltaVista and Infoseek.

The quality of resources, governance by 

a selection policy, positive tone, and cheer­

ful, functional design earns healthfinder a 

bookmark on any computer. Consumers of 

all ages and health professionals can rely 

on it for rapid access to data, news, events, 

organizational contacts, and publications.—  

Kristina L. Anderson, University ofA labama; 

kanderso@bama.ua.edu

V o lca n o  W orld. Access: http://volcano. 
und.edu/.

Beginning from a deceivingly simple 

homepage, this Web site from the Univer­

sity of North Dakota contains an impressive 

array of information that will prove invalu­

able to a number of audiences. The “Start­

ing Points” page, for example, leads one to 

sections on topics ranging from currently 

erupting volcanoes, volcanoes of the world,

Sara A m ato is autom ated systems librarian at Central 
Washington University; samato@tahoma.cwu.edu

http://www
http://volcano
mailto:samato@tahoma.cwu.edu


C&RL News ■ July/August 1998 / 529

and images and information about specific 

volcanoes, to information on volcanic parks, 

monuments, and observatories.

The “Volcanoes of the World” section may 

prove to be the most critical section to many 

users. This page provides a clickable map 

of the world, whereby one may retrieve an 

exhaustive list of the world’s volcanoes by 

country or by continent. Clicking on the 

name of a specific peak retrieves a topical 

page on the volcano, including photographic 

images, an essay with links from highlighted 

geological terms to an excellent online glos­

sary, and a bibliography of sources consulted 

for the article.

The “Ask a Volcanologist” section allows 

the user to write to the volcanologists and 

other scientists who maintain Volcano World. 

This section includes an excellent “Fre­

quently Asked Questions” page, which pro­

vides a wealth of diverse facts, from describ­

ing the volcano that killed the most people 

in modern history (Tambora in Indonesia 

killed approximately 92,000 in 1815) to a 

listing of all active Hawaiin volcanoes.

The “Kid’s Door” section includes school 

project ideas, descriptions of activities, and 

childrens’ art. The “Teaching and Learning” 

section will prove invaluable to secondary 

school teachers and to college education ma­

jors. It includes a variety of lesson plans for 

teachers, lessons and activities for students, 

and links to sources of other information about 

volcanoes. Extensive teaching modules are 

provided, which include classroom goals, ob­

jectives, key concepts, materials needed, in­

structional strategies, and evaluation questions.

This site should well serve college and 

university undergraduate science and science 

education students, as well as secondary 

school students and teachers.—John Creech, 

Central Washington University; creechj@ 

www.lib .cwu.edu

T o b a c c o  C o n t r o l A r c h iv e s . Access: 
http://galen.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/.

The Tobacco Control Archives is a project 

sponsored by the Library and Center for 

Knowledge Management at University of 

California San Francisco’s (UCSF) Depart­

ment of Archives & Special Collections. Its 

purpose is to “collect, preserve, and pro­

vide access to papers, unpublished docu­

ments and electronic resources relevant to

tobacco control issues primarily in Califor­

nia.” Currently the archives contain Brown 

and Williamson Collection, Mangini v. R. J. 

Reynolds Tobacco Company Collection, and 

various other related pages. A major new 

document is “The Cigarette Papers Online,” 

an electronic version of The Cigarette Pa­

pers by Stanton A. Glantz, John Slade, Lisa 

A. Bero, Peter Hanauer, and Deborah E. 

Barnes. At the time of this review only a 

demonstration chapter was available.

The Tobacco Control Archives is one of 

the best organized sites around. The separate 

collections are searchable and browseable. The 

documents are scanned images of the origi­

nals. As such, the quality of the images varies 

greatly, but all of them that were displayed 

were readable. The collections currently con­

tain thousands of pages of documents. All are 

available in paper format at the UCSF library.

Browsing the Brown and Williamson Col­

lection is quite easy. The browse link takes 

the user to a brief topical list. Each link then 

brings up a related set of links to the docu­

ments. Clicking on one of the document 

numbers brings up a record describing the

document in greater detail with the follow­

ing fields: title, notes, author, year, second­

ary authors, date, type of work, document 

ID, keywords, and a detailed abstract. At 

the bottom of each record are links to the 

separate images of each document page.

Searching the Brown and Williamson Col­

lection is extremely easy to do. The user 

can search using full text or title. A search 

on emphysema (not a title search) retrieved 

11 documents. All were highly relevant. The 

search engine used is SWISH-E, available 

for free from University of California at Ber­

keley. It is available at http://sunsite . 

berkeley.edu/SWISH-E/.

The Tobacco Control Archives is one of 

the best librarian-designed sites on the Web. 

It sets a high standard for creating special 

collections on the Web. This site is espe­

cially useful for anyone interested in smok­

ing and tobacco litigation. The user will find 

themselves returning again and again.—  

Wilfred Drew, SUNY College o f Ag. & Tech.; 

drewwe@morrisville.edu

http://galen.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/
http://sunsite
mailto:drewwe@morrisville.edu