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C&RL News, November 2007
Vol. 68, No. 10

by Joni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost

DisabilityInfo.gov. Access: http://www.disabilityinfo.gov/
DisabilityInfo.gov is developed and maintained as a collaborative effort of 22 federal agencies. It is managed by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. The purpose of this Web site is to connect people with disabilities to the information they need to be active participants in the workforce and their communities. On the homepage, the “Hot Topics” section provides links to current interest resources, such as “Disability Benefits for Wounded Warriors” or “Supporting Caregivers Across the Life Span.” Most of these links (which change frequently) are to other government Web sites that offer information to help disabled individuals and their families.

A search engine allows users to search the Web site by keyword, and the advanced search option allows limiting by interest group, subject area, and/or state. Users can subscribe to e-mail updates by entering their e-mail address.

Navigation tools for the Web site include links to federal information under categories including “Employment,” “Education,” “Housing,” “Transportation,” “Health,” “Benefits,” “Technology,” “Community Life,” and “Civil Rights.” Each category includes links to “News & Events” and “Grants & Funding.” Some categories also offer a section on “Laws & Regulations.” A “Popular Links” section provides links to other relevant Web sites.

A map of the United States creates a doorway to state and local information. Using a pull-down menu, the user can choose one of the general categories and then select a state or U.S. territory. Each resource indicates whether the site covers state, county, or city-specific information. “Press Room” leads users to an FAQ, “Research & Statistics,” information about federal partners, “News Releases,” and the “DisabilityInfo Connection Newsletter.”

DisabilityInfo.gov is in conformance with the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, which provides guidelines to make Web sites more accessible to users with disabilities. The designers of the site claim to be in conformance with level Double-A of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Links to download Adobe Reader or Microsoft Reader are readily available from the Web site’s main page to help sight-impaired users navigate the site.

The logical organization of this site and its conformity to accessibility guidelines benefit all users, especially people with disabilities, their families, employers, workforce professionals, and veterans and service members. DisabilityInfo.gov is a comprehensive online resource, well designed to provide people with disabilities quick and easy access to the information they need.—Lea Currie, University of Kansas Libraries, lcurrie@ku.edu

NASA Earth Observatory. Access: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/.
The NASA Earth Observatory is a public Web site for Earth satellite images and information related to the study of our planet through the use of remote sensing systems. The research and educational focus is “on Earth’s climate and environmental change.”

The main sections of the site are “Data & Images,” “Features,” “News,” “Reference,” “Missions,” and “Experiments.” A secondary grouping of site content is by subject, including “Atmosphere,” “Oceans,” “Land,” “Energy,” and “Life.” Three main sections, “Data & Images,” “Missions,” and “Features,” provide the primary information related to the satellites, research, missions, and activities of the Earth Observatory.

“Data & Images,” housing mostly data, reports the measurement of various Earth characteristics over time among its main subject categories. Site visitors can generate QuickTime animations comparing particular measurements over time. “Visible Earth” provides a substantial number of images from NASA. Specific satellite images of the Earth can also be found using the search feature on the observatory site.

Select “Features” to read the results and view the images of specific remote sensing projects. Remote sensing has even been used to locate potential sites for fossil discovery, according to a study called “Finding Fossils in Space.” Past and future projects are also discussed under the heading “Missions.”

The “Reference” section is useful for an overview of the earth sciences (in the context of studying the changing Earth), as well as biographies of pioneering geoscientists. An optional feature is the glossary mode, which produces links to key term definitions within the text. Another site feature of note is “Ask a Scientist,” with a question form and an archive of answered questions. Go to the “Experiments” page to find experiments and interactive games that can be used to instruct a variety of ages on the use of remote sensing to study the earth’s changes.

The regularly updated NASA Earth Observatory includes current news and authored research articles and reports. The homepage provides an RSS feed or visitors can subscribe to weekly e-mail notices. The use of rollover images on some pages to bring up page content is problematic if a user accidentally moves his or her mouse over these images while reading the page. The award-winning NASA Earth Observatory is a fascinating and essential site for scientific researchers, earth science students, and anyone interested in Earth satellite imagery.—Kristy Cook, McLennan Community College Library, kcook@mclennan.edu

National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
Molecular biology is the scientific branch that studies macromolecular life processes, especially the structures and functions of nucleic acids and proteins that determine chemical cell processes and inheritance. NCBI was originally established by the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health in 1988 to serve “as a national resource for molecular biology information.”

Although the knowledge of this field is rapidly changing, NCBI has successfully collected the current, worldwide publicly available information in this field. NCBI is also continually building upon this knowledge through its own research and information management innovations and, in turn, is discovering new data interconnections. This process of continual knowledge generation provides the international scientific community with a comprehensive product that is well designed with many cross-reference links to data and literature.

The homepage contains seven main hyperlinked choices located on the top toolbar. The options are “PubMed,” “All Databases,” “BLAST,” “OMIM,” “Books,” “TaxBrowser,” and “Structure.”

NCBI’s PubMed, for example, offers access to more than 17 million scholarly biomedical journal citations and/or abstracts from MEDLINE journals, as well as citations and/or abstracts from other reputable life science journals dating from as early as 1950. Full text is furnished if available, free of charge directly from publisher Web sites and other NCBI products.

The “All Databases” link, which is also on PubMed pages, enables users to search across approximately 31 NCBI databases using Entrez, NCBI’s specialized search engine. “GenBank” is highly regarded by the scientific community for its annotated nucleotide sequences and its contributions to the understanding of the human genetic makeup and other organism genomes. “BLAST,” the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, provides capabilities for comparing nucleotide or protein sequences to estimate genetic, functional, and even evolutionary interrelationships. Another toolbar feature is “OMIM,” the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, a database that supplies quick access to gene and genetic disorders information. NCBI also serves as a portal to taxonomic data and free specialized structural and biochemical databases that provide information that may be challenging to find by other means.

“Books” proves full-text access to selected biomedical books and is recommended for academic librarians developing their own print collections. Overall, based on the wealth and quality of information, NCBI is recommended for all academic biomedical online collections.—Caroline Geck, Kean University, cgeck@kean.edu

Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public services and collection development at Willamette University, e-mail: jroberts@willamette.edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian for technical services at Willamette University, e-mail: cdrost@willamette.edu

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