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OSTIblog Articles in the non-text information Topic

DOE Data Explorer

Early in May the new design and the expanded search functionalities of the DOE Data Explorer were launched.  The major upgrade continues this month with the addition of customization features that enhance your interaction with the DDE database.  You may be familiar with some of these from OSTI’s other information products.  For example, you can now download retrieved records into an Excel spreadsheet format or create an account to store your searches in a personal “library.”  But brand new is the ability to log on and choose how you wish to view DDE’s search results!  Use the standard list format to get a preview of each record’s abstract/description.  This view, available with or without an account, can be sorted by relevance or alphabetically by title. 

Choose the detailed, tabular display to see more results per page (up to 100 records at a time) and to view at a glance the OSTI ID, title, content type of the data collection or dataset, and the sponsor organization.  Each of the columns can be used as a sorting choice, further increasing the ways you can view your retrieved information.

If you didn’t have time to take a look at the new release of the DOE Data Explorer earlier in the summer, we encourage you to do so now.  Revisit the OSTIblog article of June 20, 2013 to read more about the search capabilities DDE now offers and the larger scope of its content.  And, as always, let us know if you have comments or questions.

Related Topics: DOE Data Explorer (DDE), non-text information

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A (re)Birth Announcement for the DOE Data Explorer

A database and its supporting website can get periodic makeovers and sometimes it can even undergo rebirth!  The DOE Data Explorer (DDE) has just emerged from a rebirth process, and we are proud to announce its transformation.  The first version of DDE was launched in 2008 with the mission of guiding users to collections of publicly available, DOE-sponsored data and other non-text information.  Hundreds of websites were researched in order to find these collections at DOE’s labs, program offices, and user facilities, at data centers, at colleges and universities, on private sector websites such as SciVee, and across all science disciplines.  The mission has not changed, but the content has grown to include individual datasets within collections.  Now DOE boasts a new website design, better navigation, enhanced search functionality, and new features to help you analyze your search results.

The most obvious change in design, of course, is in the color scheme and the clean lines of the new pages.  DDE took inspiration from OSTI’s recently launched SciTech Connect, opting for a design that clearly says “family look and feel.”  An exciting part of the new “feel” appears on the left side of your screen every time you do a search.  Like SciTech Connect, DDE automatically breaks down the results of the search into groupings that allow you to shortcut through a long list of citations and go directly to the subset of your choice.  In DDE the groupings are based on the types of data and non-text items that were retrieved by your search term.  Search on the word “solar,” for example, and you will...

Related Topics: data, data sets, datacite, Digital Object Identifier, DOE Data Explorer (DDE), dois, non-text information, redesign

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