Useful Websites for Your Advocacy http://www.ada.gov U.S. Department of Justice), Americans with Disabilities Act- This site is essential for understanding your civil rights as a person with a disability in the areas of employment, public transportation, housing, accessibilty to public buildings. A variety of ADA related fact sheetes are available. http://www.congress.org A good site for beginners. Provides pointers for communicating with Congress, an overview of the legislative process, and a congressional schedule. Also has a useful section called “Congressional Scorecard,†which gives you various associations’ official views on a given issue. http://www.house.gov Official sites of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Provides links to e-mail addresses and Web pages, congressional schedules, information on current legislation being considered, and numerous links to other government Web sites.
http://www.senate.gov
Official sites of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Provides links to e-mail addresses and Web pages, congressional schedules, information on current legislation being considered, and numerous links to other government Web sites. http://www.christopherreeve.org The Christopher Reeve Action Network consists of people with spinal cord injuries who are committed to fighting as active citizens speaking together with one loud voice. As part of the paralysis community, they have common interests in fighting for the political and legal issues that threaten progress on cutting edge research, quality of life, and disability rights. Several ongoing legislative initiatives are highlighted on this site by clicking on thier advocacy link. http://thomas.loc.gov This Library of Congress site is the best way to track active legislation. You can download bill summaries from the current Congress back to 1973 (93rd Congress) or the full text of legislation from the present back to 1989 (101st Congress). It allows you to search for legislation either by bill number or by subject area. Also provides current and back issues of the Congressional Record back to 1989. This site also provides updates on committee activities and hearing schedules. http://www.aascipsw.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=42&Itemid=66 A good Web page for information about advocacy guidelines for effective communication with legislators including effective letter writing, telephone calls, congressional visit checklist, and detailed breakdown of the legislative processs. http://medlineplus.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/organizations.html A fairly comprehensive page of links to various health care organizations. http://capwiz.com/asae/home An excellent resource to identify state legislators by zip code. Also provides bill-tracking links in various state legislatures. http://cq.com Congressional Quarterly's Web page, designed to help the average voter track what is happening in Congress. This site has an interesting link called Rate Your Rep, which allows people to compare thier own position on issues to where thier legislators stand on those issues. Additional Search Engine Options for Research There are, literally, hundreds of search engines and thousands of searchable databases on the Web. We'd like to take a look at a small handful of these important tools and highlight their advanced search features to help you get the most out of your Internet research. When you're visiting your favorite engine or database, try the advanced search page. Every search engine and database has an advanced search screen to help you build your search by adding or limiting your scope. Look for an "advanced search" or "detailed search" link and/or a help section. Here are some advanced search tips for some of our favorite tools: REHABDATA: www.naric.com/research/rehab/advanced Visit the Rehabdata Advanced Search page to limit your literature search. REHABDATA spans more than 50 years of research. Limit your search to a range of years to get the most recent publications. combine your search terms. Search for a word or phrase, search in multiple fields, or look for specific projects or authors. "not out" terms you don't want to include (i.e. search for deaf but not deaf-blind).
CIRRIE: cirrie.buffalo.edu/search CIRRIE's database offers an international perspective on disability and rehabilitation research. Their main search page lets you limit by author, journal, or geographic are search for phrases using "quotes" look for documents in a specific language
ERIC: eric.ed.gov ERIC's database may be focused on education, but it's still a huge collection! From the initial results of your search, you can search within results t Google: www.google.com Google seems to be everyone's "go to" search engine. Look past the main search blank to take full advantage of Google's power: try scholar.google.com to limit your search to academic and scholarly resources (including Medline) learn Google's language. Use "quotes" to search for a phrase, - to exclude terms, and ... to look for numerical ranges click "advanced search" to explore other features, including searching in other languages.
Searchthetail.com - Expands your Google search with terms you might not have considered www.google.com/coop/cse/ and www.rollyo.com - Create your own custom search engine! Learn how www.pubmed.gov The National Library of Medicine's databases are massive! PubMed is a gateway of choice when searching Medline, Toxnet, etc. Click the limits tab t - limit your search to specific authors, journals, and years
- look for free and full-text articles
- select the type of article, ages of study participants, language, subsets of data, and more
- select default tags, such as MeSH subheadings or grant numbers
Don't stop there! Try these "alternative" search engines: www.Gopubmed.com - Gopubmed organizes your Medline search into categories, authors, journals, and years. www.Exalead.com - Preview your search with terms highlighted, narrow your search using the handy panel on the right. | 
