Expanded coverage for free technology search service - TechXtra

TechXtra, the free service for finding material in engineering, mathematics and computing, has added a bundle of new sources to its cross-search. Now, it's possible to search across 31 major collections (over 4 million items) for articles, eprints, technical reports, books, theses & dissertations, teaching & learning resources, the latest industry news and job announcements, and more!

In addition, TechXtra has partnered with GlobalSpec to bring you a free Patents and Standards search facility.

We've also increased the coverage of our OneStep Industry News and Job Announcement services by adding numerous new sources.

And that's not all! 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. For a full list of the collections covered by TechXtra, see: http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/index.html?action=collectiondetails  
TechXtra aggregates, so that you don't have to!

• Platts - Nuclear, Metals, and Electric Power news.
• Building Design & Construction News
• IEEE Spectrum
• Brightsurf Science News
• PhysOrg News
• SPIE NewsRoom
• Control Design News
• Wireless Net News

Various enhancements are being made to the TechXtra service interface, making it easier to use.

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.

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. Why not tell your colleagues about TechXtra, or blog about the service, or place a link to it from your websites.

A web version of this press release is available at: http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/news/press-release5.htm