Physical Science, Math and Technology Research > 4: Supporting Data, Documents & Artifacts

4A: Types of Resources

Data (such as facts or statistics), documents, artifacts (objects) and biographical information related to your topic will provide support, evidence or credence to your research thesis or claims. The best source for your project will depend on what type of information you are researching. For example, biographical information provides context to a subject's life. Data and statistics illustrate trends or provide support for ideas. Artifacts provide visual evidence for your findings. It is important to distinguish between the two basic types of information: primary sources and secondary sources. Primary sources are from the time period you are researching (from the historical context). These sources can include artifacts, statistics, autobiographies or newspapers. Primary sources often form the foundation for a research project. Examples are: your own compilation of statistics, lab experiment results, E-prints, correspondence between researchers, patent records, mathematical formulas or solutions, computer languages, a scholarly article reporting the results of scientific research, etc. Secondary sources may also form a foundation for research, but more often these sources provide additional support for your ideas. They include Web pages, articles, or contemporary books. The key distinction between primary and secondary sources is that secondary sources interpret primary sources. Textbooks, biographies, and book reviews are good examples of secondary sources.

4B: Examples

AccessScience (McGraw-Hill) [*** OSU authentication required]
http://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=http://www.accessscience.com/

The online version of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, containing 7,000 articles, 115,000 definitions, and biographies of more than 1,200 key scientists. AccessScience is updated with 3 or 4 breakthrough science and technology stories every week.

FAA Data and Statistics
http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/

This site from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provides public access to data on airline safety, incidents, accidents, commercial space data, aerospace forecasts, and more.

eFunda: Engineering Fundamentals
http://www.efunda.com/

This site bills itself as "the ultimate online reference for engineers." There are six major categories in this reference source that provide useful scientific data: materials, processes, formulas, design center, units/constants, mathematics.

HubbleSite
http://hubble.stsci.edu/

View pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, including dramatic photos of the birth and death of stars.

NIST Physical Reference Data
http://physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/contents.html

NIST provides this reference, which includes values of the fundamental constants as well as atomic and molecular spectroscopic data, ionization, X-ray, nuclear physics and condensed matter physics data.

USPTO Web Patent Database
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor. In the United States, patents are issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Records in the PTO full-text patent database include the inventor's name, patent's title, assignee's name, abstract, full description of the invention, diagrams and drawings, and the claims. The database covers the period from January 1976 to the present in full text and full-page images since 1790.  Only patents that have been issued are included, not those under consideration.

4C: How to Find More

ScienceGov
http://science.gov/

Science.gov is a gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies, including research and development results. It is also called "FirstGov for Science".

Google Book Search
http://books.google.com

A beta search tool with scanned pages from thousands of all types of books contributed to Google by publishers and libraries. Your keywords can be searched within the full text of books. Only a limited number of pages can be viewed online for books under copyright restrictions. In these cases, see if OSU or an OhioLINK library own the book for borrowing. Books that are no longer under copyright restriction can be read and printed in their entirety online.

OhioLINK Digital Media Center ***
http://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=http://dmc.ohiolink.edu/

Audio, video, and image collections provided by OhioLINK.

Oxford Reference Online ***
http://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/

A resource (available to the OSU community by means of subscription) of about 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. It is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of these books.

OSU Library E-Book Collections***

These collections are available through the OSU library subscriptions. All titles in these collections can be found through the library catalog, but by connecting directly to a collection, topics and names are searchable within the books.

• ebrary
  http://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate
• NetLibrary
  http://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=http://www.netlibrary.com/
• OhioLINK Electronic Book Center (EBC)
  http://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=http://ebooks.ohiolink.edu

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