Creating a consumer health information network

Abstract

Describes how a consortium, consisting of City University of New York Office Library Services, METRO, the New York Academy of Medicine and New York Public Library received a TIIAP grant from the US Department of Commerce in October 1991, to demonstrate the power of the National Information Infrastructure to bring consumer health information to the broadest possible public. The partners demonstrated that libraries have a significant role to play in the implementation of Internet‐based services through their traditional roles of collecting, organizing and making accessible information of all types to the public at large. The site they created, NOAH (New York Online Access to Health) is user‐friendly and consistently organized and bi‐lingual (English/Spanish) which gives access to carefully selected authentic health information. The partners found that the cost of creating and maintaining an information‐rich Web site is not trivial.