ICML 9

9º Congresso Mundial de Informação em Saúde e Bibliotecas

Salvador, Bahia - Brasil, 20 a 23 de setembro de 2005

BVS4

4ª Reunião de Coordenação Regional da BVS

19 e 20 de setembro de 2005

Internet search tools for scientific information used by health faculties in a Venezuelan University: a cross-sectional research

Participantes:
  • Profesora Asistente, Departamento de Investigación, Facultad de Odontología, Universidad de Los Andes  - Venezuela
  • Profesor Instructor, Departamento de Investigación, Facultad de Odontología, Universidad de Los Andes
  • Profesor Instructor, Departamento de Ciencias Morfológicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Los Andes  - Venezuela
The increasing use of databases in all the areas of the knowledge has produced important changes in science.  These databases allows more efficient search about investigations, made on any specialized subject in scientific magazines. This research looks forward to know the scientific information search strategies used by the faculties of health schools in the University of Los Andes (ULA), Venezuela.  This cross-sectional study was specifically carried out in the schools of Medicine and Dentistry in 2005.  We found that although most of the ULA´s professors considered themselves as & quot;good & quot; or & quot;very good & quot; in their knowledge in the use of Internet, 71% uses general search engines like Yahoo or Google to seek scientific information, despite the quality of the content. Whereas only a 29% use exclusively the specialized health databases:  Medline, Lilacs, Cochrane and others.  Also these professors consider that the main difficulties for the obtaining a complete article are the cost and ignorance about the form to obtain it.  We conclude that the university faculties do not know the ideal search tools to retrieve scientifically reliable data, thereby we doubt about the quality of the information for their professional update and future researchs.