By Agnes Guyon, EEVL Database Officer: A.Guyon@hw.ac.uk
The Engineering E-journal Search Engine (EESE), http://www.eevl.ac.uk/eese/, is a new service from EEVL. ROADS readers may be familiar with the UK Engineering Search Engine, which indexes all the UK sites in the EEVL Main Database of Internet Resources. EESE uses the same software to index engineering e-journals. The search engines are based on the Harvest Broker, which is also used by OMNI, EELS and Index Morganagus to index text on particular groups of sites.
EESE is slightly different from the UK Engineering Search Engine as all the URLs harvested were selected from among the electronic journals which are included in the Main Database. There are currently 344 e-journal sites in the Main Database. Although all these journals are quality resources, certain criteria apply for inclusion in the E-journal Search-Engine index. The journals have to be full- text i.e. be all or mostly made of full-text articles, access has to be freely available, and sites are not included which require registration. It was decided to include both UK and Non-UK journals, and files in PDF and postscript format are also indexed. It was impossible to apply these criteria other than by painstakingly reviewing each site, and listing the appropriate urls and rules the Harvest Broker should follow when indexing the sites.
At present, over 70 engineering e-journals have been included. This includes a variety of formats, from trade journals, with a lot of product information, to refereed scholarly journals. Some of these journals are house magazines from important organisations, some are online versions of print journals, others only exist in their online form. As far as we know, most of these are not indexed anywhere else, and the only other index of e-journals that we know of is Index Morganagus, mentioned above, albeit in a very different subject. One of the developments planned for EESE is to bring some order to this slightly eclectic collection by introducing search filters. This would allow the user to choose, for example, between trade or scholarly journals.
The feedback we received has been very positive. The webmasters or editors of the e-journals included have all been informed by email and those who responded seemed enthusiastic about the service, apart from one who asked to be removed. Access statistics also show popularity with over 8000 queries performed since the service was launched at the beginning of March, less than a month ago. Of course improvements are always possible so we are keen to receive any feedback about the service. Please contact Agnes Guyon: A.Guyon@hw.ac.uk
