What is your first step when you need information? Do you ask someone? Do you search somewhere?
How good is the information you find? How do you know the quality of this information?
What do you do when you find good information? Where do you keep it? Is it easy to retrieve?
What tools do you use?
When I first need information, I usually head straight to google. Depending on the type of information I need, I will look at different websites. When looking for crucial medical information, such as information on a specific disease for work, I will usually consult with my nurse friends or doctors at my organization. Once I have their answers, I will also consult google for a second opinion. If I am looking for scholarly information, I will typically consult PubMed or Google Scholar.
The quality of the information I look at varies. It usually depends on how important the topic is to me. For example, if I am just looking up some random symptoms on of my friends has sent me, I do not care about the quality of the information; as long as there are solutions, I will use the main sites that come up, such as Healthline (and usually just tell them to go to the doctor at the end). If I’m looking up medical or scholarly information, I typically like to check a few sites and only use official sites if I can. For example, I try to get my COVID information from official government sites since many sites are now publishing false information. It is always safest to go with government sites and check the information you are receiving against many other sites. I try not to use sites where anyone can freely modify information.
When I find useful information, I usually like to save it in a word document, email it to myself, or send it in a message to a friend to easily retrieve it when necessary.
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