 The grandparents-in-law of the author, Meredith (88) and Burton (89) Goetz of Tiffin, Ohio, have inspired her to examine the intersection of technology and aging for the past seven years. Anne Goetz ( 77), the sister of Burton Goetz, photographed the image.

[ 8] McNutt, R. A. “Shared Medical Decision Making: Problems, process, progress.” JAMA 292 (2004): 2516–2518.

[ 9] Xie, B., & Jaeger, P. T. (in press). “Designing Public Library Computer Training Programs For Older Adults To Promote Technical Skills And Personal Well-Being.” Public Libraries, 47, no. 3 (2008).

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reduce healthcare costs [ 8]. While older adults like Margaret have learned—through the mass media, younger family members, and friends—what the Internet can provide, they just don’t know how to make use of the rich resources and opportunities that the Web provides. One reason is that older adults are more likely than their younger counterparts to lack the necessary knowledge and skills to fully utilize the Internet’s potential. Another reason, however, lies in the design of Web interfaces and systems, as they are geared primarily toward younger adults. To fully harvest the power of the Internet to benefit older adults like Margaret, it is important to provide necessary training and better design to facilitate older adults’ learning and use of the Web.

Fortunately, there is some progress in achieving these goals. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM)—both part of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH— have developed a set of research-based guidelines for designing “senior friendly” websites (http:// www.nih.gov/icd/od/ocpl/resources/wag/docu-ments/checklist.pdf). Following these guidelines, the NIA and NLM have more recently developed the NIHSeniorHealth website (http://nihseniorhealth. gov/), which specifically targets the aging population. While this site currently lists only a very limited number of health topics (and limited content under each topic), it has a number of special features (e.g., adjustable text size and contrast, audio files with transcripts, videos with captioning) that make it an excellent starting point for older adults

seeking specific health information for themselves or loved ones. This site also serves as a convenient gateway to the more comprehensive MedlinePlus site ( http://medlineplus.gov/). If an older person wants to know more detailed information about a health topic, he or she can easily navigate from NIHSeniorHealth to MedlinePlus to obtain the information.

This is, in fact, what happened in Margaret’s case: After she showed me how she would search on Google (and fail to find the information she wanted), I introduced her to the NIHSeniorHealth website, which she really liked because of its simplicity and ease of use. She could not find information about Vitamin D there, but one of the health topics, “osteoporosis,” led her directly to the osteoporosis section on the MedlinePlus site, where she did—very happily—find what she had wanted in the past couple of months. The moral of the story is, there is rich, high-quality information on the Internet. Unfortunately, there is often a gap, especially among older adults, between the knowledge and skills users have and those that they need in order to successfully obtain information. While designers should continue to improve the usability of Web interfaces and systems, educators also need to provide necessary training to increase public awareness of better approaches to access the health information available on the Internet (e.g., starting from a specialized website like NIHSeniorHealth instead of a general search engine).

While many community organizations can play important roles in this training process, public libraries in particular can be an ideal site for providing such training for older adults [ 9]. Since September 2007 my students and I have been working with the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System in Maryland to provide age-appro-priate, hands-on, step-by-step training for older adults to learn to use the Internet to find high-quality health information.

ABOUT ThE AUThOr Dr. Bo Xie is an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also a member of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at the university. She received her Ph.D. in science and technology studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006. Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of older adults, information and communication technologies, and health.