United States National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

ToxSeek

ToxSeek® is a free meta-search engine developed by the Division of Specialized Information Services at the National Library of Medicine. ToxSeek enables users to search across diverse biomedical and environmental health resources and provides a method for efficiently locating information resources on topics related to toxicology and environmental health. ToxSeek uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to retrieve, integrate, rank, and present search results as coherent and dynamic sets.

ToxSeek allows selection of resources from a wide range of authoritative sources in these categories:

NLM TOXNET	Databases on hazardous chemicals, toxic releases and environmental health from the National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Other NLM	Additional selected resources from NLM, including PubMed
NIH	Resources from other institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
U.S. Government	Toxicology/environmental health information from other United States government agencies
International	Other selected international resources, such as the World Health Organization (WHO)
Other Resources	Other topic-specific information resources

Web Access/Searching

ToxSeek is available at: http://toxseek.nlm.nih.gov

In ToxSeek, select an information category (or choose to “view all categories”) and enter a search term/s in the box. The ToxSeek results page returns resources in relevance order; this can be changed via the pull-down box to either alphabetical or source order.

ToxSeek’s results “clustering” feature helps users to more easily identify particular concepts. These “clusters” are created from what is retrieved in the original query, and can be useful in uncovering a specific concept or focus for more in-depth searching.

The results are presented in a categorical fashion, with the number of hits per source displayed along the top. You can narrow your search to a particular group of sources.

Results are shown in bibliographic format with the title of the article followed by a list of authors, issue number, page number and other relevant information. A notable addition is the inclusion of the article's ranking by source. This indicates the article's importance by relevance and the source it was extracted from.

Further Information

For detailed information on ToxSeek, contact:

Specialized Information Services
National Library of Medicine
Two Democracy Plaza, Suite 510
6707 Democracy Boulevard, MSC 5467
Bethesda, MD 20892-5467
Telephone: (301) 496-1131
e-mail: tehip@teh.nlm.nih.gov
URL: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov

For general information on the Library's computerized information services, including TOXNET, contact:

National Library of Medicine
Customer Service
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20894
Telephone: 1-888-FINDNLM (1-888-346-3656)
e-mail: custserv@nlm.nih.gov

A complete list of NLM Fact Sheets is available at:
(alphabetical list) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsheets.html
(subject list): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsubj.html

Or write to:

FACT SHEETS
Office of Communications and Public Liaison
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland 20894
Phone: (301) 496-6308
Fax: (301) 496-4450
email: publicinfo@nlm.nih.gov

Last reviewed: 18 September 2008
Last updated: 19 January 2007
First published: 17 January 2007
Metadata| Permanence level: Permanent: Stable Content