Find medical and health information from reputable web resources, and from books and journal databases at the State Library of Victoria.
You may by now have explored definitions, brief descriptions and/or symptoms and medical tests. You could next look for more comprehensive information. Good options for this type of resource include books and some good quality websites (these will be looked at below).
Gale Health and Wellness database is providing TEMPORARY free access to all during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. For non registered Victorian members just click on this link.
Gale Health and Wellness is automatically updated with the latest daily content from News Articles, Academic Journals, Reference, Magazines, Videos & Audio and the Coronavirus topic page features a link at the top of the homepage.
If you are looking for information on a disease or health condition it is important that you cast your net widely. For example, a search on diphtheria provides a handful of results of mostly older publications, whereas if you broaden your search to infectious diseases (or the formal subject heading, communicable diseases) you will receive a wide range of results which are likely to have relevant material on this topic.
Use the library catalogue to search for books at the State Library of Victoria, or, alternatively search the catalogue at your local library.
Remember, when searching a library catalogue, you are searching words in the title, author, subject heading, or occasionally other keywords or notes attached to the item - not the full text content. (Hint: If you look at the details of a relevant result, you can use one of the subject headings attached to it to determine better subject terms to conduct a further search on).
Publication date is a particularly important factor in the area of medicine; you generally will want the most recent thinking on a topic. You can use the date filtering options on the search page to limit your results to books published within the last few years.
The following websites are from reputable sources and provide reasonably comprehensive coverage for a wide range of medical conditions and health issues.
MedlinePlus is a US site. It is the National Institutes of Health's website for patients, their families and friends. Produced by the National Library of Medicine, it provides information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues. MedlinePlus offers reliable, up-to-date health information, for free.
You can use MedlinePlus to learn about the latest treatments, look up information on a drug or supplement, find out the meanings of words, or view medical videos or illustrations. You can also get links to the latest medical research on your topic or find out about clinical trials on a disease or condition.
Better Health Channel is the Victorian state government's health site. The content is evaluated by relevant experts before inclusion. It provides information on a variety of conditions and diseases, as well as looking at healthy lifestyle topics. It also has a directory of health professionals, health services and support groups. It is less comprehensive than MedlinePlus, but still provides an overview, as well as often linking to further good resources.
Tools to help you assess the quality of health stories in the media:
Health News Review
A US based site which evaluates the quality of health news stories. Not-for-profit site, and no advertising.
NHS Choices: behind the headlines
Aims to provide an unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories that make the news
The following organisations (Australian and International) are important sources of information on a multitude of health matters, especially public health matters and health statistics.
LIBRARY UPDATE
For details of current access arrangements please see our Covid Safe Library page
