From Tech Transfer Newsletter, Fall 2007 » printer-friendly

Transportation Information Research—How Do I Find What I'm Looking for?

By Rita Evans, Reference Librarian, Institute of Transportation Studies Library

When performing transportation research, chances are you need information quickly to address a specific question. When other cities resurface a road, who pays for adjustment of utility covers? How many total peak trips usually trigger a traffic study? When must you use detectable warning material to comply with the ADA?

It's easy to fall astray while looking for information in the wrong places, but a research runaround is not necessary. A number of handy transportation-specific research tools are available to help you quickly find what you need.

The TRIS (Transportation Research Information Service) database, produced by the Transportation Research Board, is a great place to find technical reports from government and academic researchers, journal articles, and conference papers. Looking for pavement preservation techniques? Airport security developments? Information on how to finance light rail line extensions? Solutions for campus parking squeezes? Cost-effective construction equipment asset management? All modes of transportation are covered in more than 600,000 records, with an emphasis on highways and public transportation. About 10% of the records have links to full-text online sources.

For the 90% that aren't available in full-text on TRIS, you may need to check with a library. Two of the largest with significant intermodal transportation collections are the Northwestern University Transportation Library (NUTL) and the Institute of Transportation Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley (ITSL). NUTL emphasizes socioeconomic aspects while ITSL emphasizes engineering.

Search NUTL's catalog. You can also search the library's extensive article database TRANweb. Holdings of the ITSL collection are listed in UC's Melvyl catalog where you'll find books, technical reports, journal articles and conference papers.

The National Transportation Library hosts a collection of electronic resources produced by government agencies at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels. NTL Integrated Search allows searching of the digital repository, and links to other transportation websites (portal access) and the TRIS database.

To search more than one library at a time, try TLCat, which can be accessed through the National Transportation Library. This is a union catalog representing the collections of 40 transportation libraries. Once you've identified a resource that has the information you need, TLCat will help you locate the item in a library near you.

Google can be a terrific search tool, but imprecision can result in millions of hits, and who wants to wade through that? With Google's Transportation Meta Search, however, your search will be focused on results from transportation sources such as state DOTs, transit agencies, and research institutes.

If it's statistics that you're after, try TranStats, the intermodal transportation database produced by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The data finder allows you to search by mode or by subject, and links to numerous government statistical databases. Not sure what agency produces the data you're looking for? Fedstats' Transportation Section will point you in the right direction.

In addition to TRIS, TRB produces several other databases of interest to researchers. Its Publications Index lists titles, can be searched by series, and has links to electronic versions of documents. Research in Progress tracks research undertaken by federal and state departments of transportation and university research centers. The Transportation Research Thesaurus lists vocabulary terms that can be used to produce broadened results when searching TRIS or other transportation resources.

Finally, for best results, consult a transportation librarian. Whether they are working at your state DOT library, at an academic library affiliated with your university transportation center, in a research institute, or another setting, these information professionals are very familiar with the resources and the best techniques for using them. They know the agencies, the data sources, the catalogs and databases, who's reliable and who has a hidden agenda. They can point you in the right direction, save you loads of time and make sure that you don't overlook essential sources.

As the saying goes, the journey is half the fun of travel. The same can apply to research about transportation. The resources outlined above should provide you with a strong research foundation and help you locate the information you need quickly and efficiently.

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