Winner’s Circle of Best Science Web Sites
Web Directories for the Biological
Sciences
Diane Schmidt,
Biology Librarian
University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
SLA 92nd
Annual Conference, June 12, 2001
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http://dmoz.org/Science/Biology/
A Netscape/AOL project. Sites selected and categorized by volunteers;
over 18,000 biology sites. Most of the links in the sub-directories are well-chosen,
though with any volunteer organization there is variation in the quality of the
directories. Also, the “cataloging” is
occasionally strange. ODP data is used by other Web directories, including
Google, Lycos, and many specialized directories.
http://www.academicinfo.net/biology.html
Includes
academic-level Web sites in a variety of subjects. Again, the “cataloging” is occasionally debatable and the site
can’t claim to be comprehensive, but most of the major Web resources are to be
found even if you have to dig around a bit.
Apparently run by a volunteer group of scientists. Formerly a separate
site, now part of BioView (a biotech/pharmacology jobs site). Includes links to
associations, databases, protocols, jobs, institutions, companies, software,
humor… Aimed at corporate researchers.
BioMedNet.
This site requires
free registration to access many of its features. Features include the science news magazine HMS Beagle and an annotated and ranked list of about 3,500
WebLinks. Unfortunately, few links have been added since 2000 so the list is a
little out of date. It is also strongest in molecular biology.
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/biosites/
A collaborative
project by librarians in the Pacific Southwest Region of the NNLM. Well chosen,
primarily biomedical sites in subjects such as dermatology, animal welfare,
biochemistry, and public health. Sites are annotated and indexed using MeSH.
INFOMINE:
Biological, Agricultural, and Medical Sciences
http://infomine.ucr.edu/search/bioagsearch.phtml
INFOMINE
is a venerable scholarly Internet resource collection, with links selected by
librarians. As of 1998, there were over
4,500 links (the latest figures available).
Some resources, such as electronic journals, are only available for UC
affiliates. The lack of a hierarchical structure makes it difficult to browse,
but finding narrowly focused resources is easy.
http://www.sciquest.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ExecMacro/sci_index.d2w/report
Provides news stories
and numerous links categorized by subject, type (databases, directories,
educational materials, research news, selected sites). Sponsored by SciQuest, a
“technology and solutions company”. A good source for background information
and news on a variety of topics.
http://www.ScientistCentral.com/
At the moment, only
the biological sciences are covered in this directory, but there are plans to
expand into other scientific fields. It is heavily into molecular biology, but
hits the big sources in other fields, and the organism directory is a useful
feature. Most sections haven’t been updated since 2000, however.
Listed in several
other Web directories as BioCrawler, this German-language site has over 1,200
links for all the sciences in the “Link-Datenbank”. The ScienceGuide section also provides access to several
dictionaries (for a fee), a conference calendar, and more. A good source for
European research and news, if your language skills are up to the job.
WWW Virtual Library:
Bioscience.
http://www.vlib.org/Biosciences.html
Arranged by subject
category, this venerable guide has been around since the dawn of the Web and is
supported by a number of societies. The
subject categories may be very narrow (plant parasitic nematodes) or broad
(cell biology), and vary in quality, currency, and size.
Other interesting directories:
http://biology.miningco.com/science/biology/
Check out the animal
cams on this schoolkid’s page! On a more serious note, this site is a good
place to go for basic, easy-to-understand information (to get your
non-technical staff up to speed, for instance).
http://www.biozone.co.nz/links.html
A nice site from New
Zealand; of interest to the general public and students. Has a directory of
over 500 links with lots of good ecology/biodiversity sites. There is also a mirror site from the UK.
Britannica.com.
This site provides Web site links and
news briefs as well as encyclopedia articles so it is a good starting point
when you need some basic information before Web crawling. The Web site listings
are occasionally unhelpful, but that’s the Web for you.