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Legal professionals can search for science information on such topics as the health effects of a product on human subjects, hazardous substances, scientific evidence, or climate change statistics using these science databases and sites. 

For medical information, Pubmed, is a good place to begin your research.  Scirus is considered to be one of the better search engines on scientific topics and Yahoo: Science provides a great directory on a variety of science topics.  Two databases for toxicology  information, ATSDR and Toxnet, are provide by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Links to scientific data and information on climate change can be found at Open Mind and RealClimate.org.

ATSDR –  This site for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides health information on harmful exposures and diseases related to toxic substances.

Climate Data Links - This site provides links to climate statistics and data.  The sites listed are collected on the blog Open Mind, a blog on global climate change.

Martindale’s the Reference Desk - Martindale's the Reference Desk is a robust site of science information.  It provides a list of science related databases, links to math calculators, science overviews, and science information on a variety of topics.

OAIster Digital Library  - OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources. They provide access to digital resources from across the globe.  For fun, try searching for an old-time advertisement of electric refrigerators from the Library of Congress archives.

PubMed – From the National Libraries of Medicine, this database contains information from MEDLINE and other life science journals.  

RealClimate - This is a discussion site for the science community on global climate change.

Scirus - Scirus is a search engine for scientific topics which has advanced search capabilities and searches many databases that other search engines do not.  It is geared toward professional researchers rather than the general public.

Toxnet - Toxnet is another site offered by the National Library of Medicine on  toxicology, environmental health, hazardous chemicals and toxic releases.

Yahoo: Science - This is Yahoo's index of science directories.  Most of the entries are annotated, and most entries are listed alphabetically, although some entries are placed under a "most popular" listing.



Submitted by Jenny Zook, Reference Librarian on March 2, 2009

This article appears in the categories: Law Library

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