The 'Long Tail' of technology information
 
It's a prerequisite for any successful search service in technology, and
technology-related subjects, to have a 'Long Tail' - by that, in this
context, I mean a large inventory of relevant data. This is because the
majority of search queries made by technologists, or by others seeking
information in technology-related subjects, tend to be very specific.
It's in the nature of the subjects, and the information retrieval needs
of those involved in these subjects, for granularity to be important. 
 
TechXtra http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/
<BLOCKED::http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/>  aggregates content from a large
number of different databases containing technology-related content. A
search of TechXtra will search across more than 4 million records of
various kinds - articles, technical reports, digital theses and
dissertations, books, eprints, news items, job announcements, video,
learning & teaching resources, key websites, and more - most of which
relate to technology subjects. TechXtra therefore has a 'Long Tail', and
its getting longer! 
 
TechXtra aggregates, so that you don't have to. From the one TechXtra
search box, you can currently search 29 databases. If you need them,
there are easy links to the native interfaces of these 29 databases.
Hits from searches are shown by database, so you can scan their content.
Sometimes this is useful, and sometimes not (we're working on more
options). If you want, you can restrict searches to a particular format
(technical reports, or articles, or books, and so on), or two selected
databases using the Advanced Search option. 
 
TechXtra recently added three more databases to its cross-search: 
  Australian Digital Theses (ADT) (details of, and links to the full
text of about 8,000 digital theses); 
  DiVA, technology subset (an archive containing details of doctoral and
undergraduate theses and research reports from 15 of Nordic
universities);
  Open Video Project, a small repository of digitized video. 
 
In the majority of cases, the full text of items found through TechXtra
is freely available. This includes the 8,000 Australian theses mentioned
above, nearly half a million articles in computer and information
science from CiteSeer, items found via ARROW (Australian Research
Repositories Online to the World), thousands of eprints from arXiv in
mathematics and computer science, 300 earthquake engineering technical
reports from Caltech Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory
Technical Reports, many articles from the Directory of Open Access
Journals (DOAJ), theses and dissertations from NDLTD, resources from
around 30 institutional open archives in the United Kingdom, learning
resources from the National Engineering Education Delivery System
(NEEDS), and more. We'll shortly be adding graphics which will give a
visual indication of the likelihood of being able to click-through to
the full text. 
 
Sometimes, materials found via TechXtra are not available in full text,
or are only available if you, or your institution, subscribes to the
service, or via pay-per-view. 
 
In addition to the cross-search, TechXtra provides a number of other
useful services, some of which have recently been expanded. 
 
Numerous new feeds have been added to the OneStep News service
http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/onestepnews/
<BLOCKED::http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/onestepnews/>  giving this wider
coverage of breaking industry news. The new feeds are from: PRWeb, AZoM
Materials/Engineering News, NASA Breaking News, MIT News, EETimes News,
ENCMag.com News, and Automotive World News, and more. 
Over 5,000 news items are currently listed. 
 
The coverage of OneStep Jobs, http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/onestepjobs/
<BLOCKED::http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/onestepjobs/>  which gives access to
the very latest new job announcements has also been increased. New
sources include: Total Jobs, TipTopJobs, IrishDev.com Jobs,
4ConstructionJobs.co.uk, and Eluta. 
Over 7,000 new jobs are currently listed. 
 
For those who'd like to subscribe, free, to numerous trade magazines,
white papers and surveys, TechXtra has a Magazine Subscription section
http://techxtra.tradepub.com/ <BLOCKED::http://techxtra.tradepub.com/>
All titles are free to professionals who qualify. 
 
Sample titles include: 
  Hydrocarbon Processing http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/hp/
<BLOCKED::http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/hp/>  (petrochemicals and
refining) 
  circuitnet http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/ctn/
<BLOCKED::http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/ctn/>  (electronics
manufacturing)
  energybiz http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/ebiz/
<BLOCKED::http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/ebiz/>  (power industry) 
  Waste Management World http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/wmw/
<BLOCKED::http://techxtra.tradepub.com/free/wmw/> 
 
There are also links (Xtra Extras) to newsletters of interest in
technology information, a design data search service, a bookstore, and
an Offshore Engineering Information service. 
 
Some more features will shortly be added. 
 
Here's what David Bradley, Science Writer, wrote about TechXtra: 
http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/grabbing-the-long-tail-of-search
-engines.html 
Here's what Karen Blakeman wrote about TechXtra: 
http://www.rba.co.uk/rss/2006/08/techxtra-now-independent.html 
 
TechXtra is a freely available service, developed at Heriot Watt
University in the UK. We receive no external funding for its
development, so we rely on word of mouth to spread the word. I hope you
may help, and tell your colleagues about TechXtra, or blog about the
service, or place a link to it from your websites. 
 
For more information, contact: [log in to unmask]
<BLOCKED::mailto:[log in to unmask]>  
 
Roddy MacLeod MA, DipLib, MCILIP

Senior Subject Librarian   

Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS   

  Tel (0131) 451 3576   Fax: (0131) 451 3164

 

[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>      

 

http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/libram/roddy.html