Resource of the Week
by Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor
This week we'd like to introduce you to something cool, useful and new from Roddy MacLeod and the good folks at EEVL, at Heriot Watt University in the UK. You may already be familiar with EEVL, the "Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing," where you can browse and search the best websites in these subject areas. It is part of the Resource Discovery Network, "the UK's free national gateway to Internet resources for the learning, teaching and research community." Now, via a new federated search tool, EEVL makes it possible for you to mine the invisible web.
The simple search form on the home page is intuitive; simply enter your keyword(s) -- boolean AND is assumed -- and choose one of the pre-defined search categories from the dropdown menu: articles, key websites, books, industry news, new job announcements, technical reports, e-print archives, learning and teaching resources, latest research, or "All." An advanced search form -- which supports boolean AND/OR/NOT and phrase searching -- allows you to choose one or more specific databases via check boxes. Note the links that allow you to view your "Last Search Result" or "Previous Search Results" during the same session.
In many cases, you'll get full-text results -- e.g., from arXiv, CiteSeer, CSA Hot Topics, EEVL Ejournal Search Engine, ePrints UK, EEVL Website Search Engine, NACA, NASA, OneStep Jobs, and OneStep Industry News. From Copac, EEVL, Pearson Education, and SearchLT Engineering, you'll get details about books or websites, and you'll need to click through to either get to the website or find out how to buy or borrow the book. A few databases -- Recent Advances in Manufacturing, Inderscience, Zetoc -- are subscription-based resources; an open URL resolver should allow you to click straight through to full text if your institution subscribes (although your mileage may vary, since this is a UK-based resource).
Note the "Xtra Extras" on the home page, which link you directly to:
+ Hot Topics -- Free in-depth reports on topical issues, from CSA.
+ Trends -- Free Civil Engineering trends articles, from Emerald.
+ Design Data -- Validated Engineering Design Data information, from ESDU.
+ Newsletters -- 11 free newsletters from Pro-Talk.
+ Magazine Subscriptions - Trade Publications Free to Qualified Professionals, via TradePub.
+ Ejournal Search -- Search the content of over 250 freely available full-text ejournals.
+ Jobs -- The latest job vacancies from over 30 sources.
+ Industry News -- The latest engineering, mathematics and computing news from over 60 sources.
+ Bookstore -- Discounts on new technical books, from Pearson.
+ Offshore Engineering -- A free service providing information on publications and meetings in offshore engineering.
+ Internet Tutorials -- 14 free Internet information skills tutorials, from the Virtual Training Suite.
+ Manufacturing -- A free Recent Advances in Manufacturing bibliographic database, containing details of over 40,000 articles from more than 500 leading journals.
+ Internet News -- A free monthly newsletter.
+ Gateways -- The Pinakes subject launchpad, linking to more than 50 major subject gateways.
According to MacLeod, "You might say that Xtra xposes databases to the xtent that you don't have to xhaust yourself with xtensive searches of xternal databases and sources. Xtra xtracts the vital information, and is xtremely easy to use." We think that's pretty accurate.
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