This is a 2017 Powerpoint presentation given at the Department of Interior Library. The sources and information were correct at the time of presentation but have not been updated and should be double checked for current accuracy. Please feel free to contact the Department of Interior Library with any questions.

1. Locating Scientific
Government Information
on the Web: When
Google Isn't Enough
Wednesday, January 25 2017
Presented by Shannon Lynch, Law Librarian
US Department of the Interior Library
https://www.doi.gov/library
Mary_Lynch@ios.doi.gov (202)208-3686

2. Department of Interior databases are
available to all DOI employees
 For those of you who work at the Department of Interior, I want to make sure
you know you have access to a great deal of scientific content and journals
through subscription databases. You can find those databases on the Library’s
homepage, https://www.doi.gov/library and move your cursor over
Databases. These are accessible to all DOI employees nationwide, working at
a computer with a DOI IP address, so they are accessible even if you are
working at home.
 You can scroll down and see a list of databases too. And if there is a specific
journal you know you need, you can use the feature “Find Electronic Journals
By Title” to see which of our databases has the journal you are looking for.
 If you do not work at DOI, you can come in to our library in Washington DC
and access these databases using four public terminals we have here. We are
open Monday through Friday from 7:45 am to 5 pm and you can call us at
(202)208-5815 for any additional details.

3. The Deep Web – What is it, and what does it
mean for finding scientific information?
 The Deep Web is the part of the World Wide Web that is not discoverable by
means of standard search engines, including password-protected or dynamic
pages, databases, and encrypted networks. Essentially, there is a lot of
content that exists on the Internet that won’t be retrieved by search engines
 The Deep Web is not the same as the Dark Web, where IP addresses of the
servers that run them are hidden, allowing people to anonymously trade in
illegal goods and services, share hacked email addresses, and other nefarious
activities. We are not going to the Deep Web for our scientific information!
 Some examples of websites that are part of the Deep Web include LexisNexis
and Westlaw Next, ScienceDirect, and many government websites that
include databases. The web page may be indexed by search engines, but it
can’t necessarily access database content and display it to you in search
results

4. Starting point: Using Google Most
Effectively with Search Operators
 If you are looking for a specific scientific document, report, or subject matter and you know
the government agency that created it, or one likely to have it, it is worth running a Google
search using Google operators such as site or filetype. You can find a list of commonly used
Google search operators at https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en
 In the search bar, type the search terms (perhaps the article title, or whatever information
you have), and use the site operator – site:doi.gov
 So for example, if you are looking for more information on a research project about bats that
you think someone at the Department of Interior conducted, you can type bats site:doi.gov
(making sure you do not leave a space after the colon) and see what comes up, including this
research project, Causes and Consequences of Bat Fatalities at Wind Turbines, Research
Project: RB00CNG.17.0
 Note that if you just Google bats “Department of Interior,” this research project is not one
of your top thirty search results and maybe not at all – it is likely housed on the Deep Web
 Also note: There are often relevant results beyond your first page of search results. Don’t be
afraid to keep clicking! You can also change the word order of your search, or sign out of any
Google accounts you are signed into, to change your search results

5. Google Scholar
 Google Scholar is another excellent place to search if you are looking for
journal articles, including peer-reviewed journal articles.
 It lives at https://scholar.google.com/
 You can also use it so search for patents and/or case law
 If you use Chrome, and are a frequent Google Scholar user, you can install a
button so there is an icon you can click on each time to use it.

6. Google is not the only Search Engine
 Believe it or not, Google is not the only search engine! And searching in
different ways may bring you back different results.
 There are many other search engines in the world, including DuckDuckGo,
Bing, Yahoo!, Ask.com, Lycos, and Wolfram Alpha
 There are also metasearch engines, which searches using more than one
search engine at a time, so you don’t have to type things in to several
different search engines. These have advantages and disadvantages, but try
Deeperweb.com or Dogpile.com
 Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s $45 billion philanthropy organization is
making its first acquisition in order to make it easier for scientists to search,
read and tie together more than 26 million science research papers. The Chan
Zuckerberg Initiative is acquiring Meta, an AI-powered research search engine
startup, and will make its tool free to all in a few months after enhancing the
product. Its AI recognizes authors and citations between papers so it can
surface the most important research instead of just what has the best SEO. It
also provides free full-text access to 18,000 journals and literature sources.

7. Some government agencies with
scientific information on their websites
 Department of Interior – and many of its agencies (United States Geological
Survey, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of
Reclamation, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management,
Regulation and Enforcement, Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and
Enforcement )
 Department of Energy
 US Environmental Protection Agency
 NASA
 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
 Food and Drug Administration
 US Patent and Trademark Office
 US Department of Health and Human Services
 National Science Foundation
 And more!

8. Science.gov
 Science.gov is a gateway to government science information and research
results. Currently in its fifth generation, Science.gov provides a search of over
60 scientific databases and 200 million pages of science information with just
one query, and is a gateway to over 2200 scientific Websites.
 Science.gov is an interagency initiative of 19 U.S. government science
organizations within 15 Federal Agencies.
 Science.gov 5.0 provides the ultimate science search through a variety of
features and abilities, including:
 Accessing over 55 databases and 200 million pages of science information via
one query
 Clustering of results by subtopics, authors, or dates to help you target your
search
 An advantage to searching on Google: All you will get is scientific articles, and
not irrelevant content

9. WorldWideScience
 WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway comprised of national and
international scientific databases and portals. WorldWideScience.org
accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching
of databases from around the world Multilingual WorldWideScience.org
provides real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed multilingual
scientific literature.
 On behalf of the WorldWideScience Alliance, WorldWideScience.org was
developed and is maintained by the Office of Scientific and Technical
Information (OSTI), an element of the Office of Science within the U.S.
Department of Energy. Please contact webmaster@worldwidescience.org if
you represent a national or international science database or portal and
would like your source searched by WorldWideScience.org.
 Search results include journal articles, technical reports, conference papers,
other reports and textual information, as well as scientific and technical data
sets and data collections.
 Sources having full text access for viewing, printing, or downloading should
have "Full Text Available" displayed in their WorldWideScience.org search
results citations.

10. NTIS (National Technical Information
Service)
 NTIS is part of “America’s Data Agency,” the U.S. Department of Commerce.
 NTIS helps federal agencies make better decisions about data, with data. NTIS
provide the support and structure that helps its partners securely store,
analyze, sort, and aggregate data in new ways.
 Created after World War II, it was designed to serve as the U.S. government’s
repository for scientific research and information. It houses more than 3
million publications, with data covering topics that range from aerodynamics
to urban development. The archive spans the Manhattan project to present.
 National Technical Reports Library: https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/

11. PubMed
 PubMed is a database created and maintained by the US National Library of
Medicine and National Institutes of Health
 PubMed comprises more than 26 million citations for biomedical literature
from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include
links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites – or
they may not, but if you have a citation, we can use it to possibly locate the
article elsewhere on the web, or via Interlibrary loan for DOI employees
 You can limit your search to return only those results where the full text of
articles is available, or even free full text, should you choose to (this depends
on your research needs).

12. JSTOR
 JSTOR can be accessed at https://www.jstor.org/
 If you are a DOI employee, you can login to JSTOR via the Library website and
access the following collections: The JSTOR collections we subscribe to
include:
 Life Sciences collection
 Health and General Sciences collection
 Arts & Sciences I
 Arts & Sciences II
 Arts & Sciences VII
 Early Journal Content collection
 If you’re not a DOI employee, our library is open to the public and you can
come in to the library to access JSTOR. Other options include searching on the
web and logging in via your public or academic library account – many
libraries have JSTOR access that may allow you full text access

13. Additional Sources for Technical Reports
on the Web
 HathiTrust.org - a partnership of major research institutions and libraries
working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long
into the future
 TRAIL – Technical Report Archive and Image Library: (TRAIL) identifies,
acquires, catalogs, digitizes and provides unrestricted access to U.S.
government agency technical reports, which can be searched at
http://www.technicalreports.org/trail/search/
 NASA Technical Reports: NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) provides
access to aerospace-related citations, full-text online documents, and images
and videos. The types of information include: conference papers, journal
articles, meeting papers, patents, research reports, images, movies, and
technical videos – scientific and technical information (STI) created or funded
by NASA. Ntrs.nasa.gov

14. Directory of Open Access Journals
 The Directory of Open Access Journals can be accessed at https://doaj.org/
 The Directory of Open Access Journals was launched in 2003 at Lund
University, Sweden, with 300 open access journals and today contains about
9000 open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine,
social science and humanities. This is a database of high quality, peer
reviewed Open Access research journals, periodicals, and their articles'
metadata
 Also includes international resources and information in other languages

15. A few other resources to consider
 The US Department of Health and Human Services maintains a grey literature
database of federal, international and agency resources around the topic of
disaster medicine and public health at https://disasterlit.nlm.nih.gov/ (Grey
literature is defined as "That which is produced on all levels of government,
academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is
not controlled by commercial publishers."
 Smithsonian Collections: Science & Technology:
http://collections.si.edu/search/
 Us Department of Defense – Technical Information Center, found at
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/search/tr/journal.html
 The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a United States government
agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-
medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is
the National Institutes of Health.
 NSF maintains a website called Science360,
https://www.science360.gov/files/ with a collection of videos from
universities, research centers, and other government bodies, dealing with
scientific topics of general interest

16. Internet Archive/Wayback Machine
 Now, let’s say that you know a website had some information you needed
back in time, but you don’t see it there now. If you know the exact URL, you
can visit the Wayback Machine and see if the page was archived during the
relevant time period. For example, I can check the DOI Library’s page and see
what it looked like by copying the URL and pasting it into the Wayback
Machine: https://archive.org/web/
 We can see that the first snapshot of this page was captured on November 22,
2011 and it looked very different than it does now!
 Sometimes links don’t work and formats may not come through but this can
often be a good source of actual data or a link to some obscure information –
it is always worth checking.
 Additionally, if there is information you’d like to be preserved, you can always
request that the Wayback Machine take a snapshot

17. When in doubt, ask a librarian!
 Many of these pages have Help pages, with tutorials and even people to ask
for search advice. Use them - that’s why they are there.
 Ask a friendly librarian! We love helping people find information, and since
connecting people with information is what we do all day…we just may know
something you haven’t thought of. Sometimes we can call in a favor with
another librarian or source and get what you need…it never hurts to ask!
 The DOI Library can be reached at library@ios.doi.gov or we are a simple
phone call away: (202)208-5815
 You can also submit requests for help via our website form, found at
https://www.doi.gov/library/interior-library-contact-form
 Many other federal agencies also have libraries and librarians who can help
you, or you can also use the “Ask a Librarian” feature on the Library of
Congress website (which also has some great science and technical
databases)