TechXtra is a completely free service which is widely used throughout the world by those looking for information in technology subjects (engineering, mathematics and computing). It’s produced and maintained by staff in the ICBL and Library at Heriot Watt.
A number of improvements have recently been made to the service, making it an important source of information about articles, articles, technical reports, full text eprints, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical data, the latest research, thesis & dissertations, patents, teaching and learning resources, and more - in the subjects covered.
Now, it’s possible to search across 31 major collections (over 4 million items) from the TechXtra home page.
In addition, TechXtra has partnered with GlobalSpec to provide a free Patents and Standards search facility.
We’ve also increased the coverage of the OneStep Industry News and Job Announcement services by adding numerous new sources.
There are new, free, trade magazine subscriptions available, and we’ve also made some enhancements to the service which make it easier to use.
The new collections now covered by TechXtra’s cross-search are:
- Emerald - a well established publisher of academic and professional literature. TechXtra indexes a subset of Emerald Journals relevant to Engineering & Materials Science. Around 6,000 articles are indexed from approximately 15 Journals. Full text content is available to Emerald subscribers, or by pay-per-view.
- JORUM - a searchable repository of learning and teaching resources for academic and support staff in the UK. TechXtra indexes around 1,500 JORUM objects. An Athens username and password are required to access the actual resources.
- Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Virtual Library. TechXtra indexes a sample subset file from the ICE Virtual Library of papers produced between 1836-1998. Over 5,500 papers are indexed (including the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers). Full text content is available by subscription, or by pay-per-view.
These collections join arXiv, CISTI, CiteSeer, DOAJ, Inderscience, IoP, NASA Technical Reports, and many more in the TechXtra cross-search. A full list of the collections covered by TechXtra is available.
TechXtra’s subject focus makes it an ideal finding tool for technology and technology-related materials.
In the majority of cases, the full text of items found through TechXtra is freely available. This includes the 8,000 Australian theses, 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, learning resources from the National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS), and more.
For more information about TechXtra, contact:
Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian
Heriot-Watt University Library
Edinburgh
0131 451 3576
r.a.macleod@hw.ac.uk
