Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Research Databases

The Schwerdtfeger Library website includes a list of Research Databases that are particularly useful for searching atmospheric science, remote sensing, and oceanographic literature. From the drop down menu in the upper right, users can select from one of nine databases. They have been chosen specifically because of their subject coverage but also because they provide a direct way to discover and access peer-reviewed articles, gray literature, and government documents. Below is a list of each of the databases available in the menu, as well as a brief description of each from the UW Library website.

Please contact us for assistance with these or any other library databases.

Aerospace database
The Aerospace Database provides bibliographic coverage on applied research in aerospace and space sciences including content from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).”

Conference papers index
Conference Papers provides citations to papers and poster sessions presented at major scientific meetings around the world. Subject emphasis since 1995 has been in the life sciences, environmental sciences and the aquatic sciences, while older material also covers physics, engineering and materials science. Information is derived from final programs, abstracts booklets and published proceedings, as well as from questionnaire responses.”

Georef
GEOREF, produced by the American Geosciences Institute, indexes the earth sciences literature of the world. It contains more than 3.5 million references to literature covering North America since 1669, and other areas of the world since 1933.”

INSPEC
Inspec includes bibliographic citations and indexed abstracts from publications in the fields of physics, electrical and electronic engineering, communications, computer science, control engineering, information technology, manufacturing and mechanical engineering, operations research, material science, oceanography, engineering mathematics, nuclear engineering, environmental science, geophysics, nanotechnology, biomedical technology and biophysics.”

Meteorological abstracts
The MGA database covers the fields of meteorology, climatology, physical oceanography, hydrology, glaciology, and atmospheric chemistry and physics. The database provides abstracts from journal articles and conference proceedings, books and technical reports.”

NASA technical reports
The NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS) provides students, educators, and the public access to NASA's technical literature. NTRS also collects scientific and technical information from sites external to NASA to broaden the scope of information available to users.”

NTIS
The National Technical Information Service is a large central resource for U.S. government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information. The database of more than 3 million publications provides links to over 800,000 full-text technical reports in 350 subject areas.”

Oceanic abstracts
Oceanic Abstracts is the premier database for marine resources, abstracting nearly 500 journals. It covers such topics as marine biology, ecology, marine geology, geophysics, geochemistry, oceanography, marine pollution and environmental protection, living and non-living resources, and ships and shipping.”

Web of science

The Web of Science is a combination of three databases: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. It indexes more than 8,000 peer-reviewed journals, providing complete bibliographic data and author abstracts.”