New websites engineering quite different results

Roddy MacLeod, one of the information professionals behind the new TechXtra engineering search service, says that engineering is possibly the most difficult subject area for a search engine to grapple with, but this hasn’t stopped his team at Heriot-Watt University taking on the challenge.

In an almost simultaneous move, Emerald Publishing has launched a new service called Emerald Engineering. IWR dec-ided to grab the tool box and take a spanner to the insides of these services to compare what they offer.

The Emerald Engineering website is very text heavy. There are four subject areas, each in a separate box, which are the main navigation tools for entering your specialised area: Advanced Automation, Computational Mathematics, Electronics Manufacture and Materials Science. TechXtra has a wide range of content resources connected to its search engine, including CSA, Emerald, HIS, ePrints UK, EEVL, Nasa, New Scientist and Scenta.

The Emerald site is more suited to browsing; there is a clear path towards the journal articles you require, for example by following the channels of subject and then the articles. TechXtra, meanwhile, is very much a search-focused product, with the search engine at the forefront of the site, although there is an option of clicking through to the providers of the content from the homepage.

Search results in TechXtra are presented as a table of the resources that fit your search terms. The search engine uses a drop-down menu to select whether you search by articles, websites, theses, books, industry news, jobs and ePrints.

Emerald Engineering has a very academic feel to its usability; users are presented with abstracts, DOI, and ISSN details. TechXtra mixes a modern keyword search engine and academia, with abstracts within search results.

Both sites provide their users with a wealth of complex information on a variety of engineering subjects, but we can’t help feeling that TechXtra has wider appeal. With a special search for teaching resources, jobs, industry news and theses, all areas of engineering, academia and business are covered , making this the ideal niche search engine for the sector.

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