The site is “an annotated multimedia listing of prose, poetry, film, video and art” that was created to be “an accessible, comprehensive resource for scholars, educators, students, patients and others who are interested in the work of medical humanities.”  Annotation, by the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, is “extra information asserted with a particular point in a document or other piece of information.”  The search service has annotations that are related to medical illnesses, education and practice which are linked through works of art, literature and film. 

     The site is designed simply.  It has an attractive color with the navigational links at the top and on every page.  The Database, which is a navigational link of the Medical Humanities site, has a different color scheme, navigational links on the top and on the left side of every page.  Annotations are subdivided by Art, Literature, Performing Arts, Editor’s Choices and the Search section.  All graphics are related to art, literature, film, etc. making them blend well with the overall design.

     Although it was a little hard for me to come up with topics to search using this database, I decided to find films and paintings related to medicine and religion.  In the Search section I chose the topics Prayer as Medicine and Religion.  They both had multiple annotations in all different subdivisions, so I chose the ones they had in common in Art and Film.  The paintings, Christ Among the Doctors by Albrecht Durer and Jesus Opens the Eyes of a Man Born Blind by Duccio di Buoninsegna, both deal with faith in the face of illness and the fact that the doctor and the patient both see the same illness in a different light.  For Film there were two videos, a documentary, Opera Therapy, directed by Traicee Evison-Griffith, released in 2005, which follows the making of an opera based on the experiences of four people that were diagnosed with cancer.  It shows how music can be used as therapy for healing.  The other video is a movie, Shadowlands, directed by Richard Attenborough, released in 1993.  It shows how the protagonist is afraid of suffering after the death of his mother, so decides not to fall in love again, but meets a woman, falls for her and later she is diagnosed with cancer.  

     The results don’t have any sponsored sites.  In each section, when you search by artists, some of the names have links to an on-line artist site.  It’s an external link to a site that says a little about the artist and presents some other paintings, or works done by them.  There is no Help or FAQs section.  The Search section is organized.  It’s divided into Annotations Search, People Search, and Advanced People Search.  They also have a Free Text Search program which is combined with Google to search for any word, phrase or name. 

     The service is unique.  It’s a special directory database concentrated on medical humanities.  I searched on Google and found there are other databases that offer similar information.  One of them is the UCL Medical Humanities Resource Database.  Both databases can be search the same way with the variations in subject and subdivisions.  The results are presented about the same.

     Using this service did help me understand database searching.  It was interesting to see how they are organized and how their resources help you on a research topic.  Concentrating on a specific topic helps narrow down a search.  The summary and comments by the annotators help you relate the work to the topic under discussion.