McGoogan Library of Medicine Web Site Purpose, Disclaimer, and Criteria
for Linking to External Sources
The McGoogan Library of Medicine Web Site serves UNMC faculty, staff,
and students, The Nebraska Medical Center staff, and Nebraska consumers.
The purpose of the site is to promote library services and provide valuable
information and instructional materials.
The McGoogan Library's Web Site provides information for educational
purposes only. McGoogan Library follows defined criteria for screening
sites to which we link, however, we cannot take responsibility for the
content of external sites. The information provided should not be used
for diagnosing or treating a health problem or a disease and is not a
substitute for professional medical care. If you have or suspect you
may have a medical condition, you should consult your own primary care
health physician for further information and advice.
Criteria for External Sites Linked from the Library Web Site
- Do the medical sites linked follow the HONcode
(Health on the Net Code of Conduct) principles ?
- Use HONcode
checklist to assess adherence to HONcode principles.
- Is the author(s) knowledgeable, reliable, and truthful?
- Author's education, training, and/or experience in the field relevant
to the information provided. Look for author's title or position
of employment.
- Author provides contact information (email or snail mail address,
phone number).
- Organizational authorship (corporate, government, or non-profit).
- Author's reputation among his/her peers.
- Who is the publishing body or site affiliation?
- The institution supporting or sponsoring the information.
- Organization recognized in the field relevant to the information
provided.
- Logical that the organization would address the topic of information.
- Relationship of the organization and the author is reasonable.
- Information resides on an individual's personal page rather than
being a part of an official site. (Closer scrutiny of personal pages
is recommended.)
- Is the information accurate?
- Bibliography or links to other documents available.
- Information based on research in lieu of personal opinion or belief.
- Research methodology presented if related to a research document.
- Is the information current?
- Dates provided for information used.
- Date document was created and updated provided.
- Links are up-to-date.
- Who is the intended audience?
- Intended audience and purpose of the document are appropriate.
- Information written in a style suitable for the audience.
- What is the purpose of the document?
- Purpose of the document is clearly evident - to inform, explain,
persuade, or to sell.
- Is the site is easy to navigate?
- Site is logically organized and relatively easy to navigate.
- Provides an internal search engine, table of contents, or an index
to locate the information required.
The following should alert you to possible lack of credibility:
- Misspelled words and bad grammar
- Anonymity (no author(s) listed)
- Lack of quality control
- Advertising on the page
- No dates provided
- Information is biased or slanted to one direction
- Extreme tone or language
- Lack of corroboration
Within a document you should find:
- Author or contact person
- Link to sponsoring institution
- Institution
- Date of creation or revision
- Intended audience
- Purpose of the information
Checklist for annotations to include on the Library Web Page
Use the following guidelines when composing an annotation to include
with links for the library Web page to aid our users in knowledge of
the site before clicking.
An annotation should include:
- Sponsoring agency (if not clearly evident by the title of the link)
- Is the site free of charge?
- Is registration required before using the site?
- Currency/update schedule.
- Brief description of the intent and purpose of the site.
- Intended audience/reading level. Is it professional or lay level?
- Any potential for bias, i.e. accepts advertising, sites must pay
to be linked.
- List any unique features of the site, i.e. available in English
or Spanish, disclaimers, etc.
- Note if cited references are included.
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