Databases of the week - Accelerate your research by using xSearch, Funding Resources, and Chemical Safety search

One challenge that researchers face is where to look for information.   Google Scholar is popular but doesn’t include the wide array of resources licensed by the Stanford Libraries.  Google Scholar (GS) search results are also limited by the last time GS crawled a website.    Current students, faculty, and staff at Stanford are able to use three customized collections of databases to find needed information.  Developed by the Stanford Libraries and Deep Web Technologies, these databases are grouped by subject categories and multiple subject categories can be searched at one time.   Up to 100 citations are available from each database and the information is retrieved in real-time.  

For xSearch and for Funding Resources search results also include matches from Stanford Profiles.  It is possible to refine search results using text or a visual wheel (shown above).  For users who are familiar with databases, they can limit the results to a particular resource using a pull-down menu.  Creating an alert to be notified about new items from a search is quick and easy.  Quick tips: Accept the final batch of search results.  Right click on items in search results to open them in a new tab. 

xSearch (Stanford-only) – contains nearly 350 databases and includes key databases for most subject areas.  The types of materials searched include articles; book, reports, and theses; data and statistics; government documents; images and streaming media; library catalogs and archival finding aids, methods and protocols; news; patents; primary sources; and reference materials.  The full-text for books and journal articles are searched so is discoverable as soon as a publisher has posted it on their website.  Tip: A BrowZine link by journal articles lets you browse other articles from that journal.

Funding Resources(Stanford-only) – created in collaboration with Patti McCabe, Director of Training and Communication for the Vice Provost and Dean of Research at Stanford,  Funding Resources contains 8 databases that enable users to quickly find funding opportunities, grants awarded, and books and news covering non-profit and philanthropy organizations.  Funding Opportunities currently include Pivot, Grants.gov, and the Foundation Directory Online.  Grants awarded include information from the Foundation Directory Online and Grantome (that covers NIH, NSF, and DOE).  Because many foundations do not have websites, searching the Foundation Directory Online is important.   Tip: from the search page, click on the link to the Foundation Directory Online in order to get a cookie for your computer.  Without this cookie, you cannot display full records.  For more information about Grants and Funding, please see this topic guide: Grants and Funding for Science and Engineering which includes resources in all subject areas.

Chemical Safety Search (Stanford-only) – This site contains about 75 resources aimed at researchers working with in laboratories on campus. It includes safety data sheets; safety data to help users with risk assessment, hazard analysis, and emergency preparedness; Environmental, Health, and Safety websites from Stanford and other universities plus safety organizations; full-text e-book and e-journal sites; literature databases that include safety topics; and some synthesis and reaction databases for searching reactants, reagents, and products as keywords.   The search results include Wikipedia “chemical box” information for chemical substances.    An open access version of Chemical Safety search that contains about 40 resources is also available.

Other open access search sites developed by Deep Web Technologies that you should check out:

• WorldWideScience.org – a multilingual search engine that searches digital collections from national libraries.   Documents are translated on the fly using Microsoft’s Translate tool.  Also searches dataset collections.
• Science.gov – includes 60 databases and 2,200 websites from 14 federal agencies.  Search results include citations to open access papers deposited into federal funder repositories.  To improve the discoverability of publications across federal agency repositories, an inventory of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and other services provided by each agency is also available.
• Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) – helps you find open educational resources from 22 different sources.  Developed in collaboration with George Mason University.
• Demonstration version of Evidence-Based Medicine – includes systematic reviews, clinical studies, clinical practice guidelines, evidence-based texts, textbooks, plus other resources.  Developed in collaboration with Samuel Keim, Professor and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the College of Medicine, Tucson, at the University of Arizona and with library staff at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Library.

For comments and suggestions, please contact federated-search-feedback@lists.stanford.edu