Quite a few users have been writing to me personally for information on how to
use the Internet more effectively for research and professional practice, so I
have prepared this short guide (note that this a guide, not a regimented
command!) to help them and anyone else who may be interested.
LIST SERVES & WEBSITES
Here is a list of all those list serves which relate to physical therapy and
rehabilitation:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1972/ChatEmail.htm
And here are some websites relating to similar fields (Heather's Hyperlinks -
very useful):
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/physio/1997-08/0059.html
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/physio/1997-08/0060.html
Of course, there is a list of ALL the list serves that exist in all fields, so
you can go there if you really want to hunt for anything else which may take
your fancy:
http://www.lsoft.com/lists/listref.html
WEB SEARCH ENGINES
If you have become a little disappointed with using Yahoo and AltaVista search
engines to hunt for miscellaneous information, try MetaCrawler, which locates
almost everything imaginable:
http://www.metacrawler.com/
Other folk swear by Hotbot, so here is their address if you want to try it,
too:
http://www.hotbot.com/
MATERIAL FROM THE POPULAR PRESS
For anyone who is tired of all this serious research stuff, then you might
want to know how to search through virtually every major newspaper in the
world for general news, enjoy the following website. Often one picks up
popularised versions of scientific advances in the general Press, so newspaper
reading is not only a frivolous activity.
http://crayon.net/about/popular.html
In a similar vein, Reuters International News agency offers an excellent
information service on all medical and health related discoveries. Look
through their useful webiste at:
http://www.reutershealth.com/frame_archive.html
TRANSLATING FOREIGN MATERIAL
Just in case some of your research material from the web is in some popular
European foreign language, there is an on-line translation facility (for short
extracts of a paragraph or two at a time) at:
http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate
I have found this very useful in translating foreign abstracts from the web or
various journals - I no longer have spend time hunting for willing Spanish,
Italian, French and German colleagues to help me every time I come across a
relevant article. All that you have to do is copy the foreign paragraph,
paste it into the blank box in this translation window and within seconds, you
will have crude translation before you. Sometimes the literal translations
are quite amusing, but generally they give you the gist of the work.
Happy surfing, browsing, translating and researching!
Dr Mel C Siff
Littleton, Colorado, USA
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|