November 2006

Introducing TechXtra

This article was kindly written by Roddy MacLeod, Senior Subject Librarian at Heriot Watt University.

Anyone who regularly searches for engineering information will know that the best results are usually obtained from either very large databases or databases which are particularly focussed on the topic under investigation. They also know that searching for engineering information can be quite frustrating, because there are so many possible sources which might contain relevant information.

TechXtra attempts to alleviate both of these issues, firstly by having a ‘Long Tail’ (you can search more than 4 million records in total, most of which relate to technology subjects) and secondly by cross-searching numerous disparate databases.

There are now twenty-nine databases included in TechXtra’s cross-search, making it easier to find a variety of types of resources, such as articles, technical reports, theses, books, eprints, news, job announcements, video and more, in technology subjects.

You can access the full text of the majority of the items found through TechXtra free of charge, including those found in the following selection of cross-searchable databases:

• Australian Digital Theses database
• ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World)
• Caltech Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory Technical Reports
• arXiv
• CiteSeer - Computer and Information Science Articles
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)
• National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS)

In the near future, we hope to add visual indicators to all TechXtra databases so you can easily identify which are likely to provide the full text.

As well as expanding its coverage, some cosmetic changes have recently been made to the TechXtra search. For example, you no longer need to select a particular type of resource before searching – the default is now to search ‘All’ types.

A host of new sources have been added to TechXtra’s OneStep Industry News service and the OneStep Jobs service. Only the very latest job announcements are listed (at the present time, some 7,000 vacancies), making OneStep Jobs an excellent source for job hunters in engineering, maths and computing.

One of the most heavily used parts of TechXtra is the Magazine Subscription section which facilitates access to free trade magazines, white papers and surveys. The most popular subscriptions include Diesel Progress, Oracle Magazine, Power and Lightwave. However ,eligibility for particular publications may be limited by geographic area.

Visit TechXtra now

© Cranfield University