Writing Guides
FedWorld
Steps to a FedWorld Search
Step One
FedWorld is a public access Web site listing thousands of U.S. Government Web sites and over 1/2 million U.S. Government documents, databases and other online information products.
The screen-shot below illustrates the FedWorld homepage. The purple links indicate the researcher has browsed both selections. Feel free to click on FedWorld and become the researcher yourself as you follow the discussion below. Take a moment to review the available options.
Step Two
The screen-shot below illustrates the results returned after the researcher selected the Top Government Web Sites option. As you can see, there are so many government Web sites that they have been further categorized and placed in drop-down menus.
Step Three
The following screen-shot illustrates this same page with the first drop-down menu opened and the choice of the researcher highlighted in blue. Notice the many subcategory options FedWorld has to offer. Another way to sift through the contents of a very large Web site is to examine the site map. Check it out at the top of the page.
Step Four
The screen-shot below illustrates the resulting Web page after the researcher has selected the highlighted Science and Technology Resources option. Notice that this website can be browsed either by topic or a keyword search.
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Step Five
The screen-shot below illustrates the researcher's choice to browse the Energy topic. AS you can see, the researcher has further limited the topic by selecting the Energy Conservation option and restricting the resource choice to Bibliographic Databases.
Step Six
The screen-shot below illustrates the eight results produced by these choices. Choice number three is grayed-out indicating the researcher's next move.
Step Seven
The screen-shot below illustrates the result. With each click, the researcher has drilled deeper into the FedWorld Web site. This drilling process explores the subcategory layers of the site for sources containing information relevant to a research project.
Step Eight
In the next screen-shot, the researcher has reached a destination Web site link leading to the location of a specific database.
The researcher is now being directed to a specific offsite, free-standing database as illustrated in the final screen-shot.
