Friday, February 27, 2009

Science.gov

The U.S. government has a free database that searches a multitude of resources. Science.gov is a joint effort of 18 scientific and technical organizations from 14 federal agencies that span from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Defense.


You can search amongst: - 36 government databases - 1,850 websites - 200 million pages of U.S. government scientific information including research and development.

Suggestions on how to search Science.gov:

(1) Select the Advanced Search link to the right of the search box

(2) Uncheck the All Sources link to deselect the default of all boxes being checked

(3) Check the box(es) that you are interested in searching (ie, "Health & Medicine")

(4) To further narrow your search, click on the + sign in front of the check box to see all the resources for that topic

(5) As the search completes, you may see a pop up box that asks you to accept all the results. If so, agree to display all results

(6) Browse the left menu subtopics to navigate further into your results

(7) Use the "Sort by" option atop the results to re-sort by other options

Science.gov is an example of a federated search engine. It searches across several databases. This is a great way to get acquainted with and discover government resources. Give it a try and see what you think.

3 comments:

Darcy said...

You described Science.gov nicely! One additional feature that is extremely work with is the automatic alerts emails.

I work with Deep Web Technologies, the company behind the Science.gov technology. You may also be interested in our Medical search site, Mednar (http://www.mednar.com).

Thanks for the great post!

Darcy

Hope Leman said...

Hi, Josephine. Great blog! Very useful. May I suggest that you add a Twitter button so that readers can easily follow you and learn from you?

I am fascinated by health and science search engine and provided a list a few months ago, "The Top 10 Health Search Engines of 2008"--that might interest your readers.

http://www.altsearchengines.com/2008/12/29/the-top-10-health-search-engines-of-2008/


Darcy mentions Mednar, which is on the list as is another of the Deep Web Technologies stable of products, WorldWideScience.org.

Goof for you for bringing Science.gov to the attention of a wider audience. It really is a powerful tool for exploring a huge range of topics.

Hope Leman said...

Oops! Make that "good for you!" I am the one who goofed! I am proofreading-challenged.

Hope