Research tools - latest & greatest

Himmelfarb's librarians wanted to share information about some exciting new and/or
redesigned research tools.

WorldWideScience.org
One stop search of 50 national science portals (e.g. CERN, Science.gov, Indian Academy of Sciences, etc.) While not all content is free or full text, this tool is useful to explore where you may want to dig deeper. For example, search for "avian influenza" to see the spectrum of information resources available. Developed by the US Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI).

ToxSeek
This meta-search engine for toxicology and environmental health offers a single search tool for searching the major NIH databases and resources from the National Library of Medicine. The real power of the database is the sophisticated natural language processing and artificial intelligence used to identify key words and present result clusters in an index on the left side of the screen. This tool is useful for identifying particular concepts and uncovering a specific aspect or focus for more in depth searching. For example, search for "chlorine in drinking water." Developed by the US National Library of Medicine, Specialized Information Services Division.

GoPubMed
GoPubMed searches PubMed data and provides the results in a visual format using classifications by Gene Ontology and Medical Subject Headings. Search results are semantically organized in different categories such as What, Who, Where and When. The What, Who, Where, and When category lists on the left side of the screen allow you to narrow down your results set. GoPubMed was developed by the German company Transinsight.

ReQall and Google Voice
These two services offer tools for mobile professionals. Both feature a telephone speech to text transcription service for short messages (i.e. up to 30 seconds). ReQall features reminder and sharing functions that direct your voicemail transcription to yourself or your colleagues via email or IM, and can sync the message with your iCal, Outlook, or Google calendar. When you think of things you need to remember, you can call Google Voice or ReQall, say what you're thinking, your message is turned into text, which can then be sent to you or someone else as text or voice. ReQall can also record a future task into your calendar.

Image created using Wordle