PerX and TechXtra

Roddy MacLeodHeriot Watt UniversityR.A.MacLeod@hw.ac.ukhttp://www.slideshare.net/libram/perx-and-techxtra/

Discovering eprints: finding needles in the haystack?12th Sept, European Research Institute, Birmingham

Two names

Their roles in making research outputs more easily accessible

PerX – Pilot Engineering Repository Xsearch

A project (not a service) http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/perx/ Subject Portals Project

– http://www.portal.ac.uk/spp/

TechXtra – formerly EEVL Xtra A service (not a project) http://www.techxtra.ac.uk

June 2005 - May 2007

JISC Digital Repositories Programme

Repositories Research Team Wiki (DigiRep)

< 1fte Partners

– Heriot-Watt University– Cranfield University– Institution of Civil Engineers/Thomas Telford Ltd– Geotechnical, Rock and Water Resources Library (Arizona)– Regional Support Centre East Midlands– Adiuri

Looked at various issues concerning subject-based access to digital repositories

Broad perspective on ‘digital repositories’

Information landscape

We investigated..

The range and availability of digital repository sources Cultural barriers to use of repositories in the subject community The functionality of software tools Advocacy materials to encourage participation of repository

providers Maintenance issues Interactions with infrastructural shared services Enhancing metadata quality Embedding and reuse of resource discovery services Improving search and browse results presentation Service profiling for particular audiences

We produced…

Listing of Engineering Repository Sources Engineering Digital Repositories Landscape Analysis Listing of

Basic Functional Requirements for Cross Search Service

Focus Groups Reports Advocacy Materials Setup & Maintenance Report Shared Service Report OAI-PMH Metadata Augmentation Report Embedding and reuse report

Plus two working demonstratorswww.engineering.ac.uk

Plus two working demonstratorswww.engineering.ac.uk/civil

Administrative interface

What did we find out?

"We feel more strongly than ever that there are significant advantages to a disciplinary approach to electronic services supporting advanced scholarship and higher education" Stephen and Harrison (2002)

What may work for one discipline does not necessarily work well for another discipline.

Need for Subject focused services– Agree 46.8%– Strongly agree 46.8%

What did we find out?

Creating subject perspectives is not always easy.

There are gap areas Subject information environments are

complex Repositories are less important in engineering

than some other subjects The hybrid approach has limitations Maintenance of OAI-PMH and automating

reharvesting, is challenging

What else did we find out?

More content is needed Shared services were mostly at the trial

stage We could embed a cross-search service

in a VLE

Its more difficult than you might think

Problems faced by PerX

Further PerX reading…

Building Bridges with Blocks: Assisting digital library and Virtual Learning Environment integration through reusable middleware. In Proceedings ELPUB 2007.

Digital Repositories: Building an information infrastructure in the UK. Research Information, Oct/Nov 2006.

The PerX Project - not just for engineers. E-MmITS, the electronic newsletter of the Multimedia and Information Technology Group Scotland, Spring/Summer 2006, pp. 11-14.

Overcoming the obstacles of harvesting and searching digital repositories from federated searching toolkits, and embedding them in VLEs. In Proceedings 2nd International Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems

Engineering: the changing information landscape. FreePint (198). PerX: Pilot Engineering Repository Xsearch. D-Lib Magazine 12(3). Digital Repositories in UK universities and colleges. Freepint (200).

TechXtra

Cross search 4 million items from:

Aeronautical Research Council Technical Reports (ARC)

arXiv - ePrint Archive Australasian Digital Thesis (ADT) Australian Research Repositories Online to the

World (ARROW) Caltech Earthquake Engineering Research

Laboratory Technical Reports CISTI - Canada Institute for Scientific and

Technical Information CiteSeer - Computer and Information Science

Articles Copac - Library Catalogues CSA Discovery Guides DiVA - Academic Archive On-Line Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) DSpace at MIT Emerald Engineering Euclid Mathematics and Statistics Journals Geotechnical, Rock and Water Resources

Library (GROW)

Higher Education Academy Joint Engineering/Materials Subject Centre Resource Database Inderscience Journals

Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Virtual Library (sample file)

Intute - Science Engineering and Technology Intute: Repository Search IoP Electronic Journals JORUM NASA Technical Reports National Engineering Education Delivery

System (NEEDS) Networked Digital Library of Theses and

Dissertations (NDLTD) OneStep Jobs OneStep Industry News Open Video Project Pearson Education - Books Recent Advances in Manufacturing (RAM) SearchLT Engineering

TechXtra

I think Tech

Xtra is

quite grea

t

Hi, I love your database/search facility

This is really useful resource! 

Extra..... very professional

it is a good site.

I've just explored this in a bit more detail and wanted to congratulate (& thank you) for providing this service.

I like TechXtra very much.

Large STM cross-search services

Google Scholar Live Search Academic - 27 million articles

indexed. Most are STM Scitopia – 3 million from 15 societies WorldWideScience.org – 19 databases Scirus – 100 million plus 29 databases Scitation – 1 million ScienceResearch – ‘millions’ Science.gov – 50 million

Subject communities

iMechanica

TechKnow

Any questions?