Abstract

Providing reliable and high quality information sources will be one of the basic skills of librarians in the future. Therefore, this study proposed evaluation criteria for health-related information sources based on a survey of public and medical librarians. As a result, a total of 21 items were selected as evaluation items, in three groups. The first, the health information content group, had 13 evaluation items, including accuracy, recency, medical expertise, regular updates, consideration of audience, objectivity, ease of understanding, plain (non-scientific or technical) language, completeness, relevance to the topic, verifiability, citation of information sources, and specification of precautions or warnings. The second group, the health-information sources group, had 5 evaluation items including clarity of health information for achieving its purpose, clarification of the responsibility of health information, compliance to the privacy policy, fairness of health information providers, and ethics of health information providers. The third group was the health-information website design group, and featured 4 evaluation criteria: ease of access, search capabilities, website ease of use, and query-response services.