Public Libraries

Guides to Finding Good Health Information Online

• Introduction to Health Literacy
• Find Good Health Information from MLA
• Evaluating Health Websites from NNLM
• Health and Medical Reference Guidelines from RUSA, ALA

Health Information Resources

MedlinePlus
MedlinePlus is an online health information resource for patients and their families and friends. MedlinePlus is a service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world's largest medical library, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Drug Information

MedlinePlus: Drugs and Supplements
Health Topic Page Drugs & Supplements includes information about prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines. Includes side effects, dosage, special precautions, and more. Browse dietary supplements and herbal remedies to learn about their effectiveness, usual dosage, and drug interactions.

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) is part of the National Institutes of Health, is the Federal Government’s lead agency for scientific research on the diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine.

Drug Information Portal
The NLM Drug Information Portal gives users a gateway to selected drug information from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and other key U.S. Government agencies.

CDC
Overdose information from the Centers for Disease Control.

FDA
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's webpage for consumers contains information about how to stay safe and healthy. The FDA webpage for patients has information on treatments, drugs, and medical devices, including approvals and recalls.

Get Smart about Drugs
Get Smart About Drugs is a DEA resources for parents, educators, & caregivers for identifying recreational and illegal drugs.

Drugs and Lactation Database (LactMed)
The LactMed database contains information on drugs and other chemicals to which breastfeeding mothers may be exposed.

NIH Office of Dietary Supplements
Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) fact sheets give a current overview of individual vitamins, minerals and other dietary supplements.

Research

National Library of Medicine
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has been a center of information innovation since its founding in 1836. The world’s largest biomedical library, NLM maintains and makes available a vast print collection and produces electronic information resources on a wide range of topics that are searched billions of times each year by millions of people around the globe. It also supports and conducts research, development, and training in biomedical informatics and health information technology.

PubMed
PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health–both globally and personally. The PubMed database contains more than 30 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It does not include full-text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC).

ClinicalTrials.gov
ClinicalTrials.gov is a database of privately and publicly funded clinical studies conducted around the world. ClinicalTrials.gov is a resource provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Open-i: Open Access Biomedical Image Search Engine
Open-i is a service of the National Library of Medicine enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open source literature, and biomedical image collections. Searching may be done using text queries as well as query images. Open-i provides access to over 3.7 million images from about 1.2 million PubMed Central® articles; 7,470 chest x-rays with 3,955 radiology reports; 67,517 images from NLM History of Medicine collection; and 2,064 orthopedic illustrations.