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Terminology issues in user access to Web-based medical information
A T McCray1, R F Loane, A C Browne
1National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Proceedings. AMIA Symposium
|November 24, 1999
Summary
National Library of Medicine (NLM) website users primarily search for medical information. Understanding these search queries is key to improving access to NLM
Area of Science:
- Medical Informatics
- Information Science
Background:
- The National Library of Medicine (NLM) website is a crucial resource for medical information.
- Analyzing user search queries provides insights into information needs and access challenges.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze the nature and scope of user queries on the NLM website.
- To identify patterns in search terms to enhance user access to information.
Main Methods:
- A three-month study of user queries submitted to the NLM website.
- Categorization of queries based on content relevance (medical, library services, other).
Main Results:
- 94% of queries were medical in content.
- 5.5% of queries related to library services.
- 0.5% of queries were not medically relevant.
Conclusions:
- User search behavior on the NLM website is predominantly focused on medical topics.
- Future plans include developing a Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)-based terminology server to aid NLM website users.