RESOURCE CENTRE MANUAL
HEALTHLINK WORLDWIDE
telephone lines are poor. However, Internet databases can be a valuable source
of information if CD-ROMs are not available.
For example, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has put all the major
commercial databases on their website, so that they can be searched free of
charge. Source’s bibliographic database is available free of charge from the
website. For more information see Section 6.9.6.
6.7.4 Electronic journals and newsletters
Many journals and newsletters are now available in electronic format on the
web, as well as, or instead of, in printed format. Some are available free of
charge in full text, where the whole of each article can be read, printed or
downloaded to disk. For others, only the contents pages of issues and abstracts
of each article are available free of charge, and a subscription needs to be paid to
view the complete articles.
The advantages of electronic journals or newsletters are:
• They can be searched by keyword or subject as well as by title, author, date
and issue number, allowing users to find a specific article without knowing
the complete reference.
• Articles can be printed off and read at users’ own convenience.
• Articles can be saved to file to allow sections to be incorporated into other
documents.
• References within the articles can be given with the full web address to lead
readers to the source.
• A current annual subscription may give access to back issues of journals –
though if the subscription has expired, access to the back issue may be lost.
• A journal website might include more than the articles themselves. For
instance, the British Medical Journal website includes discussion groups,
more in-depth articles, and readers’ comments that are only available on the
site.
Some electronic publications may appear on a website as PDF files. See ‘Portable
Document Format (PDF)’ in section 6.3 for more information on creating and
viewing PDF files.
For examples of electronic journals and newsletters, see Section 6.9.2.
6.7.5 How to access the World Wide Web via e-mail
It is possible to access web pages even without a full Internet connection.
GetWeb, developed by SATELLIFE in the USA, is one of a number of services
now available which allow you to request and receive the text only of web pages
through a simple exchange of e-mail messages. You need to know the exact web
address of the page or pages which you wish to access.
To use GetWeb, send an e-mail message to:
getweb@usa.healthnet.org
20 SECTION 6: COMPUTERS, ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION AND DATABASES