Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Use a librarian to fight cyberchondria!
Saw this in the Washington Post:
A glut of Google can give you a virtual fever

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/06/AR2009110603473.html


from the article: "It's a paradox: The more you read in an attempt to reduce your fear, the more you try to figure things out, the more anxiety peaks. Very few people know how to navigate the Internet and evaluate information when they're anxious, and yet that's when they tend to go online."

If your patrons are searching for health information, please ask them to put the keyboard down and to contact your library. During my initial cancer diagnosis and beyond, my friendly neighborhood reference librarians have kept me from focusing on how many people die with my kind of cancer, and I can concentrate on what my health care team is telling me, and the hard work of healing. Yes, a librarian should use a librarian.

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