Chris Moore

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Health Safety Research on the Internet

• Chris Moore

Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety
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Overview

• Background to the Internet
• What are you looking for?
• World Wide Web
• Directories Search Engines
• Reliable sites
• Message-based discussion groups
• Using discussion group archives
• Evaluating what you have found

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Background to the Internet

• Late 1960s Pentagon experiment
• used by US government, military academia
  throughout 1970s and 1980s
• public awareness of the Internet began 1993-1994
• WWW, Windows, increased computing power provided
  catalysts for rapid growth

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Internet Statistics

• c110 million known hosts (permanently connected
  computers)(Internet Software Consortium)
• c407 million users
• 15.4 million in Canada
• 134.6 million in USA
• (Computer Industry Almanac)

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World Wide Web

• academic exercise in 1992
• number of WWW sites
• June 1993 - 130
• June 1995 - 23,500
• June 1997 - 1,117,000
• June 1999 - 6,177,000
• February 2001 - 28,125,000(Netcraft)

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E-Mail Discussion Groups

• E-mail
• Over 10 billion messages sent per year
• More widely used than WWW
• Message-based discussion groups
• Hundreds of thousands of discussion groups
  worldwide
• Over 240 that are known to be related to OHS

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What are you looking for?

• Chemical information
• Government, commercial university web sites
• Topic-based information
• Government university web sites
• Legislation, legislative interpretation
• Government web sites, discussion groups
• Research results
• Scientific databases on government web sites

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What are you looking for (contd)

• Policies/procedures/guidelines
• Government, SWA university web sites,
  discussion groups
• Current information on a topic
• Research databases on government web sites,
  discussion groups
• Opinions/advice/feedback
• Discussion groups

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Finding informationon the Web

• Search engines
• Directories
• Reliable web sites

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Search engines

• Search engines
• Software indexes the content of up to 1 billion
  web pages/documents
• Search using words and phrases

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Top Search Engines

• search content of up to 1 billion WWW pages
• AltaVista - www.altavista.com
• Fast Search www.alltheweb.com
• Google - www.google.com
• HotBot - www.hotbot.com
• Northern Light - www.northernlight.com

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Directories

• Directories
• Listings by topic, compiled by humans
• Main access is by browsing topics
• Some searching possible, but just site names and
  brief descriptions not content

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Types of directories

• general purpose directories provide hierarchical
  subject access to Internet sites
• www.yahoo.com
• HS-specific directories provide access to sites
  containing HS information
• www.ccohs.ca/resources/hshome.html
• oshweb.me.tut.fi

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Reliable web sites
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Mailing Lists

• E-mail - based discussion groups
• c240 related to health safety
• Uses
• Daily Conferencing with Peers
• Problem Solving
• News on Hot Issues
• Announcements of Internet information sources
• Job postings

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H S Mailing Lists

• HS-Canada (CCOHS)
• Safety (University of Vermont)
• Occ-Env-Med-L (Duke University)
• AIHAIH-List (AIHA)
• Hazmat-l, Emerg-l, GlobalOccHyg-L
• thousands more to choose from....

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Mailing List samples
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Mailing List Archives

• View all messages that have been sent to a
  specific list
• Search by subject
• Generally available whether you participate in
  the list or not

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Mailing List Archives (contd)

• HS-Canada
• SAFETY
• Occ-Env-Med-L
• OccHygPro
• AIHAIH-List (must be subscribed)

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Where to find other HS discussion groups
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Professional Concerns

• Reliable
• Is the resource accessible when you need it?
• Authoritative
• Reasoned, verifiable information?
• Current
• Accurate

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Evaluating web information

• Who wrote it?
• Who published it (web site, print publisher)?
• Is there obvious bias?
• Are there referrals to other sources?
• Can the information be verified? (references,
  contact info., etc.)
• How current is it?
• (Johns Hopkins University)

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Evaluating information from discussion groups

• Very dependent on the type of question answered
• If you ask for advice or peoples opinions, treat
  the responses as such
• If someone makes a statement, verify it
  independently (e.g. what a specific piece of
  legislation says, which issue of a journal a
  particular article appeared in)

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Evaluating information from discussion groups
(contd)

• Is the author identifiable
• Signature file on his/her message credentials,
  employment
• Frequent contributor of good information
• Are statements publicly supported or refuted?

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Get a copy of this presentation

• http//www.ccohs.ca/iapa2001/
• Chris Moore
• chrism_at_ccohs.ca