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Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
Artcyclopedia Provides links to art images on the Web. The site is searchable by artist, work, and museum and browsable by subject, medium, or nationality.
Art History Resources on the Web Provides links to hundreds of sites related to all periods of art history, from prehistoric to twenty-first century, arranged by period and region.
Great Buildings Collection Offers information on about 1,000 works of architecture and hundreds of architects from all periods and regions.
Virtual Library Museums Pages: A Distributed Directory of On-line Museums A searchable geographic directory of museums worldwide, many of which are art museums.
World Wide Arts Resources A commercial site particularly strong in studio arts and the business side of the art professions. The site also includes databases of artists, works, locations, and arts news.
Biographies of Women Mathematicians An extensive collection of biographical information about the contributions of women to mathematics. The site can be searched or browsed alphabetically or chronologically. Profiles are compiled by students and faculty at Agnes Scott College.
acTutor History of Mathematics Archive Provides biographies, historical overviews of topics, the history of mathematics in different cultures, and a "famous curves" page with illustrations, formulas, and other information. Maintained by staff at the St. Andrews University (Scotland) School of Mathematics and Statistics.
Math on the Web A directory of mathematics resources from the American Mathematical Society. The selection of sites by topic is particularly useful.
National Science Digital Library Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, this site offers hundreds of collections of digitized material about math and science, intended to enhance science education at all levels. Users can search or browse collections or submit a question to a panel of experts.
Science.gov A portal for science information from the U.S. government. The site includes cross-searching of 30 databases as well as links to science pages contributed by 12 federal agencies. It offers an advanced search as well as a browsable directory of resources by topic.
Scirus A search engine that focuses on science materials only. It searches both free Web content and several databases that include abstracts to published research, including Medline, Science Direct, and NASA Technical Reports.
Internet Crossroads in Social Science Data Offers over 700 annotated links to online data sources. Searchable by keyword or browsable by category, the site includes links to government and nongovernment sites concerned with domestic and international economics and labor, health, education, geography and history, politics, sociology, and demography.
SOSIG: Social Science Information Gateway A selective catalog of thousands of Web sites in the social sciences, hosted in the United Kingdom. Users can browse by topic and region or search by keyword. Each entry has been reviewed and is annotated. The focus is on high-quality sites that provide information directly rather than links to other sites. This site is an excellent resource for international social science data.
U.S. Census Bureau Offers access to an astounding amount of demographic, social, and economic data. The search engine can pinpoint relevant statistical tables and reports. The site is updated almost daily with newly released reports.
If you are interested in developing a new technology/engineering design or invention, your literature review will involve a search for information about "prior art," or existing products/technologies similar to your own proposed invention. You will need to search the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent database for related patented inventions, as well as non-patent literature and information sources including research studies, articles, trade publications/databases, and the marketplace.
Follow the steps outlined on this Inventor's Literature Review Guide and Note-taking Sheet. Use the background information resources, tutorials, search engines, and portals below to conduct your searches and complete the outline and note-taking charts. You may complete the outline and charts electronically; some information may be copied and pasted from sources.
Background Information and Tutorials:
- Researching Inventions (NASA SciFiles)
- About Patents (USPTO)
- Definitions of Prior Art | Definition: Prior Art
- Patent Application Parts
- Patent Search Tutorial (Penn State University Physical and Mathematical Sciences Library) - Includes background information and individual Flash Screencast tutorials explaining steps in the patent research process.
- Why perform a patent search? | Patent Searching Tutorial
(McKinney Engineering Library, University of Texas) - How do I conduct a patent search for prior art? | Patent Searching for New Inventors: Searching by Keyword – Tutorial on how to do a keyword search in the USPTO patent database using the Quick Search interface.(About.com)
- How to Search (USPTO - Challenging)
- How to Conduct a Preliminary Patent Search (USPTO - Interactive video tutorial)
- Be a Patent Detective (USPTO Kids' Pages - Easier)
Use this Invention Keyword Worksheet to generate keywords and phrases related to your invention, which you can then use to search the patent databases. Use keywords and phrases from your Working Description in #8 on the outline and from your Non-patent Literature Review chart. Then, Use Visual Thesaurus to generate synonyms and related terms.
FreePatentsOnline: Claims to be “one of the most powerful, fastest and easiest patent search engines on the web. Our search allows advanced search techniques such as word stemming, proximity searching, relevancy ranking and search term weighting to help you find exactly what you are looking for. And, our account features let you organize, annotate and share documents, and Alerts let you instantly be notified when new documents of interest are published.” Account features require free registration with email address; or, use this search widget to perform a Quick Search.
Google Patent Search: Google and the USPTO have entered into an agreement to make bulk patent and trademark information available to the public at no charge.
- Google Patent Search Help | Advanced Patent Search
- About Google Patent Search - Scroll down for Advanced Google Patent Search Tips
Non-patent Literature and Information Sources:
Do it Yourself Market Search
Google Product Search - Search for products in the marketplace
ThomasNet - An industrial search engine that provides one source for finding manufactured products, components, or parts which may be related to an invention.
Computer Technology Resources:
ACM Portal: The Guide to Computing Literature A database of references, many with abstracts, to over 700,000 publications in the field, including books, journals, conference proceedings, dissertations, and technical reports. The advanced search option is available only to ACM members, but the basic search and browse features are useful and free. Though many of the items include links, most require subscriptions to materials that may be in your library.
FOLDOC: Free Online Dictionary of Computing A searchable dictionary of computer terms, including acronyms, jargon, computer languages, operating systems, companies, and theory.
WWW Virtual Library: Computing and Computer Science An index page for a wide variety of computer-related Web directories in the WWW Virtual Library, including cryptography, logic programming, and software engineering.