You may be concerned about losing access to federal data sets that are no longer publicly available. Many data sets remain available through our subscription to PolicyMap, a geographic data visualizer that holds many different sets of data related to demographics, health, education, and more. Learn more on the PolicyMap blog post, Purged Federal Agency Data Available on PolicyMap.
We have also noticed that PubMed and the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) database is running very slow or failing to load, and they are reporting high volume of queries. To get around this, use our access to the MEDLINE database (a subset of PubMed) through several other platforms:
- EBSCOhost’s MEDLINE Complete is a full-text database companion to the MEDLINE Index
- Ovid MEDLINE is a search interface for the MEDLINE index (no full-text)
- Embase.com provides access to MEDLINE as well as other journal collections. Please be aware that Embase uses Emtree terms as subject headings rather than MeSH terms
Other notes for accessing federal data sets:
- Many data sets that are no longer publicly available can still be found using the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive. Use the URL for the webpage or data set to search for archived versions of the information.
- We have found that some searches that are no longer allowed (such as for “diversity” on the NIH.gov website) can still be accessed by either adding additional words to the search or purposely misspelling the search. For example, you can search for “diversity and equity” or “diversity” and retrieve relevant results, so long as these pages are still published on the site.
- This Medscape article provides additional explanation and links to resources.