Where's the Data? Finding Atmospheric Data Sets for Research

Atmospheric science librarians require access to many tools to assist patrons in their research. There are databases for locating journal articles, dissertation theses, patents, gray literature, etc. However, resources for finding available data sets are not as prevalent. Authors will rarely mention data sets used in their research papers and searching the internet may not find the relevant data sets. Outside of the "invisible college", where do researchers find data that may already exist? NASA's Global Change Master Directory (GCMD), a web-based information system for global change research, provides the tools to locate data sets by selecting keywords. This presentation will demonstrate some of the features of the GCMD including search and retrieval of data set information, direct access to data sets, controlled vocabularies, and tools to create your own metadata for specialized data set collections held at research libraries.