Women's Health on the Internet

Abstract

Wood, M.S. and Coggan, J.M. (eds) Women's Health on the Internet. New York: The Haworth Press Inc, 2000 1–53pp. 20.70 (pbk) ISBN 0 7890 1300 2 This reference book contains 11 contributions, from female librarians and information specialists, aiming to help those navigating the plethora of women's health websites. Most of the annotated sites (over 100) refer to well–established organisations such as the American Diabetics Association and the National Institutes of Health. Judkins (Chapter 1) provides a useful categorisation based on website maintenance and ownership. The major question here is who is responsible for the website's administration (i.e. universities, organisations, individuals etc.). This categorisation is also followed by Boyer, in Chapter 3, who looks into sites belonging to teaching hospitals, foundations, governmental institutions, whilst simultaneously providing her readers with site-based subject lists on abortion, AIDS, domestic violence, osteoporosis and female reproduction. The main aim of this reference book is to aid consumers in making health-related decisions by facilitating the dissemination of information. Chapters 7 to 11 deal with specific issues impacting on female health. Cunningham and Ohles (Chapter 7) explore websites dealing with female fitness whilst Blook (Chapter 11) suggests references for diabetes. Crum (Chapter 8) provides the reader with a list of annotated sites on pregnancy, childbirth, and early parenting. Gross and Hall (Chapter 10) offer a list of useful internet references on menopause. In Chapter 9, Sobczak is concerned with aiding caregivers in their health-related decisions. To the credit of all the authors most of the ‘webliography’ annotated here is still valid today two years after the publication of the book. This is also another indicator of the credibility of these sites. Yet, due to the fast evolving nature of the web there are instances where one must stop at the first ‘/’ of the address and continue searching in the particular portal, as the full address has changed. Some of the websites mentioned also refer you to the new address were they have moved. Chapters 2, 4 and 5 deal with the mining and evaluation of websites and are the biggest asset of this reference book. Chapters 2 and 4 use women's health as a paradigm through which the criteria for successful internet navigation are explored. More specifically, Connor (Chapter 4) provides us with tips for mining women's heath information via search engines. This chapter could be used as a guide by a relatively amateur internet user wishing to dig out all kinds of web–based information. Access to the world wide web is relatively easy and accords a great deal of privacy but the bulk of disseminated information is of little use unless its validity and reliability is assessed. Detlefsen and Tanney (Chapter 2) offer diachronic advice to those internet consumers (i.e. researchers and academics etc) who are concerned with the reliability and validity of the acquired web information. This chapter is supplemented by Fisher's work (Chapter 5) that discusses the development of the bilingual NOAS (New York Access to Health) website which first appeared in 1995. In using it as an example she also shows how website administrators deal with issues of authority, accuracy bias and readability with regard to websites. This reference book undoubtedly achieves its aim of helping those navigating through the plethora of women's health websites for whatever reason. However, as a medical anthropologist who is working and simultaneously doing research on Greek health internet sites, I am sceptical about the book's assumption ‘that it is mostly women who use internet health sites’ and think that this may need re-evaluation in the future to keep up with potential change. Hence, the exclusion of male sites on health is regrettable particularly as some of the annotated sites also pertain to men or have male health sections.