Research Steps
- Familiarize yourself with your topic by consulting an encyclopedia or Wikipedia This also will help focus,
organize, and limit a large topic (eg: heart disease). DO NOT conduct an Internet search on a broad topic (too many links).
- Consult health and medical databases and encyclopedias in the LPC Library Reference section or MedlinePlus
- Check Healthfinder...Produced by the U.S.
Government's National Institutes of Health.
- Check The World Health Organization
- Check Medline, the
National Library of Medicine's index to health and medical research. This is the best medical research
database in the world. Read the abstracts. Some information is highly technical.
- Read reviews of books on Amazon.com
- Check the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle for articles on your
topic
- Valley Care Health Library in Pleasanton.
- Certain Kaiser Health Clinics and hospitals have health libraries. Check with one near you.
- Check the LPC Library for books and audio-visuals
- The BioScience and Public Health libraries at UC Berkeley, the main library at UC San
Francisco and Stanford Medical Schools, and the Health Science Library at UC Davis have
massive collections of health-related materials that the public can use on site. Take money and a flash drive for
saving materials.
- Public Libraries often have a variety of health-related resources.
