8. MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF CANADA (MRC)
http://www.mrc.hwc.caThe Medical Research Council's web site leaves something to be desired considering the MRC's status as Canada's major federal funding agency for health research. The home page diverges to French or English, but subsequent pages don't seem to follow any discernible hierarchical structure. There's a list of links ranging from the Doctoral Research Awards Program to a mailing address for the MRC, apparently in no particular order. Another criticism is that only four issues of the quarterly MRC Communique - from Winter 1995 to December 1996 - are posted, with no explanation of the publication's fate. Draft guidelines for the commercialization of medical research from the spring of 1996 are available, but again, there's no update. The search engine on the web site offers access to 947 documents, but there are no clues about what they might contain. News releases and other links appear to be up to date, however. All in all, it's a web site that could stand some improvement and reorganization to make it more user friendly.
