Questions - Click on question below to go to the answer

1. Is HWRC a consumer product or can it support academic users?
2.How is HWRC different from HRCA?
3. What modules are proposed for HWRC?
4. Why is some alternative health content found in HWRC and the remainder included in the module at an additional cost?
5. How often is content updated?
6. Quick Start is a very different search method that ever before used in Gale's health products. Why was it developed
7.Some documents appear to have missing images. Why?
8. At one time there were about 900 pamphlets in HRCA and HWRC. Now there is about 200. What happened?
9. Titles lists for some health products show a limited number of pamphlets listed as "Pamphlet by…". Where are the actual pamphlet titles and why are the titles lists displaying this wording?

Answers to Questions above

HWRC is designed to meet the needs of all types of users - consumers, health students, graduate students, and healthcare professionals. The user interface is simple enough for the first-time user yet comprehensive enough to support the more advanced searcher. Content follows the same formula with 100+ journals added in 2000-2001 to support academic and professional users.

Question 2
How is HWRC different from HRCA?

There are many differences. Here are a few of the most commonly discussed differences:

• HRCA is a text-based interface while HWRC is graphics-based
• HRCA has 7 reference texts while HWRC has 15
• HRCA defaults to a subject search while HWRC is a keyword search
• HRCA has 4 search paths (subject, keyword, relevancy, advanced which contains selectable paths including subject and keyword) while HWRC has 3 search paths (keyword, advanced, Quick Start)
• HRCA has a journal browse function while HWRC does not
• HRCA sorts the results list into a table of contents list while HWRC uses tabs to organize the results (except in Quick Start where organization of results are dependent on the source of the content)

Results list organization:
HRCs - Overviews
HWRC - Reference

HRCs - Reference book excerpts
HWRC - Depends on topic: reference or pharmacy

HRCs and HWRC - pamphlets

HRCs - Dictionary definition
HWRC - Only available for Medical Dictionary button Quick Start

HRCs - Periodicals
HWRC - Magazines & Journals (some discussion underway to change the tab name to periodicals again)

HRCs - Directory
HWRC - Resources

We are currently developing concepts around the following topics:
· Mental health - public health, social psychology, social psychiatry, aging, addiction, social implications of disease
· Healthcare studies - nursing, allied health
· Healthcare management - administration, informatics, finance, managed care, staffing, costing, statistics

The HWRC product provides coverage of a broad range of topics and source materials. Some of the content sources include documents on complementary and alternative medicine topics, i.e. JAMA. HWRC expands this coverage with the additional content of the module.

Some content is updated quarterly, i.e. USP DI, CareNotes, AltCareDex.
Some content is updated annually, i.e. Clinical Reference Systems.
Some content is updated whenever a new edition is published, i.e. Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine.
Newspaper supplement content is updated as published (weekly).
Periodical content is updated as received and processed. The potential exists for daily updating.

We reviewed numerous web sites and competitors' products looking for the easiest method to rapid results (that is, clicking 3 times or less to view a document). Some competitors offer limited content with button access, i.e. EBSCO's use of drug information and dictionary buttons. We wanted the completely inexperienced person to feel comfortable searching a variety of sources. Therefore, the buttons have been labeled with consumer oriented language such as encyclopedia, directory, and dictionary.

We also noted that our idea is not unique. Medlineplus uses a similar scheme but again with limited choices. Although yet unseen, it is suspected that ProQuest's new consumer site has a similar scheme based on their limited marketing materials.

We have been unable to license the illustrations, graphs, and tables that accompany these documents. One such publisher, JAMA, does not license Gale the illustrations. While every effort is made to obtain the graphics, we are unable to do so occasionally.

Our reviewers took a hard look at the content of the pamphlets section of both products. We found many duplicate documents as well as information severely out of date. Our policy, therefore, changed regarding pamphlet content. We now offer only pamphlets that were written between 1999 and today. Our pamphlets are used with permission of the original publishers that are government sponsored groups or medical/disease associations. Although the user could link to these sites using our link to the National Institutes of Health, Consumer Health Information library, we bring the content into the product so that it participates in searches.

We have attempted to replace as many pamphlets with current versions as possible. Not all original pamphlet sources have been willing to continue to allow Gale to use their materials. In order to offer pamphlets covering vital subjects, we now provide a link in HWRC to www.medem.com, a public domain site where numerous pamphlets are found that we can no longer index.

The title lists are typically produced automatically by a program that displays titles with content in the product. Our license tracking software maintains a list of licenses by publisher, not by title. Since pamphlets are used with permission of the publisher, i.e. National Cancer Institute, you will find all of their pamphlets under the name, Pamphlet by National Cancer Institute. We provide a separate manually-produced list of pamphlet titles at www.gale.com. We are developing a method to automatically produce this same list for the future.