Google has launched ‘Dataset Search’, a new search engine to help find datasets that are freely available. The service is aimed at “scientists, data journalists, data geeks, or anyone else” (so you should fall into one of these categories!).
Datasets tend to be spread across many different repositories on the web. This new search engine finds data sets that have been “tagged” using a standardised vocabulary called Schema.org (which was founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex). Prior to this launch major data repositories have been quickly standardising their metadata in line with Schema.org to ensure their data can be discovered in this new search.
Dataset Search is currently in beta. One thing I’ve found is that it doesn’t work well in Internet Explorer (11).
From the searches I’ve tried so far, I’ve found the datasets being indexed include: DataCite, figshare, data.gov.uk, catalog.data.gov, Kaggle.
Clare Allan
Senior Research Librarian