Openly-Accessible Online Resources to Share with Clients and Research Partners

Article Databases (Popular and Research Literature)

• BadgerLink  Licensed databases (many with full-text) for Wisconsin residents–a project of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Supplies access to databases such as Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier, ERIC, GreenFILE, and more.
  • Many states provide similar online services for their residents. Here are links to our neighboring states’ library services available to residents: Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan, and more (beyond the upper Midwest).

• Directory of Open Access Journals (About–mission, vision, partnerships)
• EurekAlert! American Association for the Advancement of Science (science news)
• Google Scholar (Google Web search engine for article content–citations, open-access articles, documents, and working papers)
• Public Library of Science
• SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online)
• Unpaywall (Free browser extension–Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox–that connects to Open Access research articles)

Extension Information

• EDEN: Extension Disaster Education Network
• Extension Foundation, Publications
• Journal of Extension (peer-reviewed e-journal)

Government Information

• Data.gov (open data products; browse by topic or search)
• Google Patents Search
• GPO (U.S. Government Publishing Office) (Searchable, full-text US Budget, CFR, Federal Register, etc.)
• Congress.gov (Current legislative activities, contact information)
• USA.gov (Official Web portal)

Library Catalogs & Digital Collections

• Chronicling America, Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress
• Google Books  (Search the full-text of copyrighted and public domain books for excerpts and to identify books to borrow from your local public library)
• HathiTrust Digital Library (not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items)
• Library of Congress (catalog, digital collections, and more)
• UW Digital Collections (collections of rare and unique photos, books, maps, recordings, archival documents, and more from across the UW, Wisconsin, and the world)
• WorldCat (catalog to library collections nationally, some internationally)

Reference Resources

• Encyclopedia of Earth (expert-reviewed online reference collection about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society)
• Encyclopedia of Life (online reference collection curating and sharing knowledge about living nature–animals, plants, fungi, protists and bacteria)
• InfoPlease Almanac (online reference tool including dictionary, thesaurus, atlas pages, quizzes, historical timelines and more)

Resources by Topic

Agriculture, Life Sciences, Natural Resources

• AgEcon Search  Full-text library of agricultural and applied economics scholarly literature.
• AgData Commons, USDA
• Agricola (National Agriculture Library Catalog) 1970- (see PubAg, below)
• Agris FAO, Agricultural sciences & technology.
• Animal Diversity Web
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Core Historical Literature of Agriculture, Mann Library, Cornell University
• National Wildlife Health Center, USGS
• Plants Database, NRCS
• PubAg, National Agricultural Library, USDA
• SORA (ornithological literature)
• Treesearch, US Forest Service Research Publications

Education, Human Ecology, Social Sciences

• ERIC Education Resources Information Center.  Also see BadgerLink licensed edition.
• Hearth (Home Economics Archive), Mann Library, Cornell University
• OER Commons (digital library, network)
• Open Textbook Library

Energy

• Office of Scientific and Technical Information, OSTI, US DOE

Medicine, Public Health

• Medline Plus (Health information–a service of the National Library of Medicine and NIH)
• PubMed, National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) medical literature database (with some full article access)