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
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?

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Perx and TechXtra

by Roddy MacLeod

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