Perx and TechXtra

PerX and TechXtra Roddy MacLeod Heriot Watt University [email_address] http://www.slideshare.net/libram/perx-and-techxtra / Discovering eprints: finding needles in the haystack? 12 th 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 demonstrators www.engineering.ac.uk

Plus two working demonstrators www.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 TechXtra is quite great 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