EngineeringVillage.org has about 32 million records available, including 10.7 million from the Compendex (Computerized Engineering Index) that has data going back to 1884, 9.5 million records from the Inspec Archives that goes back to 1896, 2.2 milllion government technical records in the NTIS collection, and 9.5 million patent abstracts.

How can you possibly navigate 32 million records? Searching requires second-guessing authors, and with that many records, it’s bound to miss more than it finds. So, EV uses a combination of full text searching and faceted navigation.

For example, if you’re looking for anti-gravity devices, begin by doing a text search on “gravity”…

For more, go to EverythingIsMiscellaneous.com (PS: How obnoxious is it for me to direct you to the Everything Is Miscellaneous blog for posts like this?)

[Tags: faceted_classification search tagging folksonomy patents long_tail ]

Categories: Uncategorized dw