Societies join to create federated search

Although active for a few months now, I thought many people at Eckerd might not be aware of Scitopia. Scitopia (www.scitopia.org) offers free federated searching throughout 13 scholarly societies. The federated search engine allows access into the digital libraries of member societies. Member societies include the following:

• Acoustical Society of America
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
• American Institute of Physics
• American Physical Society
• American Society of Civil Engineers
• American Society of Mechanical Engineers
• American Vacuum Society
• The Electrochemical Society
• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Institute of Physics Publishing
• Optical Society of America
• Society of Automotive Engineers
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• SPIE

Once citations have been located, Scitopia will connect to the full text if we subscribe to the journal electronically. This should work automatically if you are in the library or on campus. From off campus, you will have to log in using your Eckerd email address. For example, I searched for an article from the Journal of Applied Physics. Searching by title, I was able to pull up the citation and link directly the article PDF.

What happens if you cannot access the full text? There are two options. First, check to see if the journal is available in print from Eckerd College Library. If not, you can order the article through interlibrary loan. Not sure how to do that? Chat with me on Meebo via my home page. Visit the library Web site, click on staff and then my name for all contact info.