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EPA Makes More Chemical Databases Available to the Public
From an EPA Announcement: ToxCastDB users can search and download data from over 500 rapid chemical tests conducted on more than 300 environmental chemicals. ToxCast uses advanced scientific tools to predict the potential toxicity of chemicals and to provide a cost-effective approach to prioritizing which chemicals of the thousands in use require further testing. ToxCast is currently screening 700 additional chemicals, and the data will be available in 2012. ExpoCastDB consolidates human exposure data from studies that have collected chemical measurements from homes and child care centers. Data include the amounts of chemicals found in food, drinking water, air, dust, indoor surfaces and urine. ExpoCastDB users can obtain summary statistics of exposure data and download datasets. EPA will continue to add internal and external chemical exposure data and advanced user interface features to ExpoCastDB. The new databases link together two important pieces of chemical research — exposure and toxicity data — both of which are required when considering potential risks posed by chemicals. The databases are connected through EPA’s Aggregated Computational Toxicology Resource (ACToR), an online data warehouse that collects data on over 500,000 chemicals from over 500 public sources. See Also: “EPA Removes Confidentiality Claims for More Than 150 Chemicals” (via INFOdocket) Continue reading
State Agency Databases Activity Report 6/12/2011
We continue to have busy weeks at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project. You can find a blow by blow list of activity by visiting the project's related changes page. Highlights from the past week include: NEW PROJECT VOLUNTEERS The following people volunteered to adopt a page and have publicly claimed them: Rita Franks - LA Karen Kitchens - WY Chris Sharpe - GA Other people have volunteered but haven't put their names to pages yet. DATABASES ADDED Louisiana Addictive Disorders and Prevention and Licensing Database - Search by last name, credential number, or city for any certified substance abuse counselor, compulsive gambling counselor, prevention specialist, counselor in training, or counselor supervisor. Procedural Risk Database - This database describes risks and hazards related to medical care and surgical procedures. It was developed by the Louisiana Medical Disclosure Panel in accordance with Louisiana Revised Statutes 40:1299.40. Search by the entire database or search for risks by procedure category. Continue reading
How Data is Presented Matters: Arizona
While working on the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project updating Arizona databases, I ran across this resource: ADWR Imaged Records Database - Searchable database of digitized records, including: Well Registry, Statement of Claiment, Surface Water Files, Groundwater Authority Files, among others. This database has a number of technical hurdles: Windows Only, Internet Explorer Only, Javascript enabled, PowerWeb ActiveX viewer. The plug-in is free, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 users need to follow an illustrated, six page MS Word document to install the plugin. I don't think this is a deliberate attempt on Arizona's part to discourage access to records, but it does illustrate that there is much more to providing access to public records than simply putting them online. Ideally an agency considers the formats that citizens are likely to use and uses technologies that require low levels of involvement from users. Or, failing that, posting the data in an easy to manipulate format (spreadsheets, xml, pdf, etc) that other people and organizations can use to provide better access. Continue reading
Campaign Finance: AK, AL, CO, DC, HI, IL, MO, NV, OH
As part of the fruit of the ALA GODORT State and Local Documents Task Force's State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project, I used the project blog to create a listing of state-level campaign finance databases. So far I've got nine states: Alaska, Alabama, Colorado, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada and Ohio. Do you know of other state campaign finance databases? Either leave a comment below of drop me a line at dnlcornwall AT alaska DOT net. And if you use any of the databases listed above, I'd really love to see your comments on the project blog entry for that database. Continue reading
Government-Funded Database Blocks Users from Searching for Abortion Articles
This story is going around on the medical/life sciences library listservs today. Apparently, the POPLINE database has made the word “abortion” (and possibly other related terms) into search stopwords like AND or THE which cannot be searched. The term is still listed as a keyword, but entering it in the search box as a subject or keyword gets zero result. According to an email exchange forwarded around on these listservs, this appears to be a purely political decision, not based on that being a non-useful search term in the database. The POPLINE database, funded by USAID and hosted at Johns Hopkins U is a free database on population issues.
- Why is a Government-Funded Reproductive Health Database Blocking Users from Searching for Abortion Articles?, by Rachel Walden, MLIS (Nashville, TN), Women’s Health News, April 2, 2008
[E]ntering "abortion" as a search term in the POPLINE database now returns zero results because of a move by the database personnel to block that search. For background, POPLINE is "the world's largest database on reproductive health, containing citations with abstracts to scientific articles, reports, books, and unpublished reports in the field of population, family planning, and related health issues." The librarian who noted the problem inquired about it, and was informed that it wasn't a simple technical glitch; the response she received was, "We recently made all abortion terms stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now."I found a document, Abortion-seeking behaviour among Nigerian women, that includes the keyword ABORTION and clicked on the link to that term at the bottom of the citation and got other hits, but, as noted above, using the search function did not return these articles. Continue reading
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